


For Want of an Outfit

by CmptrWz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossdressing, Harry Potter Has No Desire to be a Girl, Harry Potter Raised in Girls' Clothing, Hufflepuff Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:15:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28507302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmptrWz/pseuds/CmptrWz
Summary: One day, Petunia was considering what to do about her nephew’s clothing. Like magic, a trunk full of clothing was delivered!Lily’s clothing, from her entire life growing up, but it was free and technically her freaky nephew’s anyway...
Comments: 40
Kudos: 179





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to For Want of an Outfit! This is based on a snippet of mine (available on Sufficient Velocity), though I went a slightly different direction from some of the original thoughts when writing the snippet. No knowledge of the snippet is needed, of course, though knowledge of Harry Potter may help.
> 
> I’m both respecting and throwing out canon as I see fit, doing my best to ignore some common fanon, and coming up with worldbuilding of my own. Some of it is trying to make sense of canon, other bits will likely be inspired by fanfic that I’ve read (whether I remember or not), and some of it will be things I came up with on my own.
> 
> This is meant to be a fun diversion for me. I certainly don’t plan on taking it too seriously, and you can expect some major canon derails. Possibly mixed with some re-railings in specific cases, depending on how I decide to handle things.
> 
> As a style note, I’m currently starting each non-prologue chapter with a non-Harry point of view scene, followed by the rest of each chapter being from Harry’s point of view. I’ve maintained that throughout the entirety of the first year.
> 
> Yes, that means that I wrote the entirety of year one before even starting to post this. I might throw in a hiatus after the entirety of year one is posted if I feel that I don’t have enough of year two written, but we’ll see when we get there.
> 
> This is also available on Sufficient Velocity, and may be more up to date there than here. Posting anything here is new for me, as my other two stories (both in the Worm universe) are only on Sufficient Velocity. Hopefully things go well here!

It was the second weekend of July, 1983. Petunia was going through Dudley’s old clothing to pick something new out for Harry to wear after an incident with the glass toy that Vernon had insisted on buying for Dudley’s birthday. She wasn’t in the mood to blame her nephew for not dodging the toy that had been swung at his back, but was annoyed that the glass shards had destroyed a shirt and pants. Vernon had opted to bring Dudley for an ice cream and she’d given Harry the apple slices she’d originally prepared for Dudley, after determining that he’d escaped any serious injury.

She suspected that his freakishness was involved there, but for a change wasn’t seeing it as a bad thing. After all, she hadn’t needed to bandage wounds or clean up blood. Glass, yes, but not blood, and the glass was quite obviously _Vernon’s_ fault in this case.

That didn’t help her with the clothing issue. Vernon didn’t want to spend money buying clothing for the boy, and she wasn’t exactly inclined to argue on that front, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that Dudley’s clothing _did not fit Harry_. They just weren’t built the same, Dudley having inherited a stockier build from his father. Eventually the neighbors were going to start questioning why they weren’t properly clothing her nephew and she wasn’t sure what she was going to tell them.

She was interrupted from her search by a thud against the front door downstairs. Then some knocking, because why would whoever it was use the _doorbell_ like a civilized person? Dropping the clothing she’d been examining, she headed downstairs. A quick check showed that Harry was nearly done with the apple slices, though she knew that he would still need to be further cleaned up before she dressed him again. Satisfied, she moved to the door, only to find that there was nobody there. Instead there was a trunk of all things, sitting there. One that she vaguely recognized as having been her sister’s.

Frowning, she stepped to it, finding that there was a handwritten label on it. An obvious order number, a completion date of over a year previous, and an incomplete address label. The latter was addressed to Lily Potter in one handwriting, but had ‘care of Harry Potter’ written under it in another ink and handwriting. Petunia scowled, then looked up and down the street. She saw no freaks around, but that didn’t necessarily mean much.

Not willing to just leave the trunk sitting there, she dragged it inside and closed the door. The trunk wasn’t locked, so she was able to open it to see what had been dropped on her _this_ time. To her genuine surprise and shock, it was larger than it should’ve been on the inside and filled with clothing. Her sister’s clothing, if she wasn’t mistaken, likely collected from their parents’ home at some point. Especially since it appeared to be sorted with basic age markings included, covering ages two to eighteen.

Petunia’s first instinct was to throw the entire trunk out, clothing and all. What did they need with her sister’s old clothing, after all? The only problem would be explaining the freakishness making the trunk larger than it should be on the inside. But as she went to close the lid of the trunk she remembered what she’d been doing. This was quite literally _years_ worth of clothing, in what looked like incredibly good condition. Curious, she carefully collected an outfit that looked like it might fit Harry. It was a pastel blue dress, complete with matching gloves and socks. There were even shoes that she didn’t think could possibly have been Lily’s originals, if only due to how new they looked.

Staring at the outfit, and looking back at the kitchen, she wondered if she could actually get away with dressing her nephew in her sister’s old clothing. The dress certainly looked like it would fit him better than Dudley’s clothing, but what would the neighbors think? They knew the boy was her _nephew_ , and not her _niece_. Then again, perhaps she could blame it on him? Something about refusing to wear proper outfits, but they’d found that he was willing to wear Lily’s old clothing?

Deciding that it was as good as an excuse as anything else, she closed the trunk and placed the complete outfit on top of it. She’d see how the outfit fit him and how he reacted to it _after_ she’d cleaned him up properly.

* * *

Vernon’s eye was twitching as he looked over the letter that had been sent home from school. It explained that Dudley was functioning below average, easily shown up by his blasted nephew who was ‘doing better’ now that the other students had gotten past constantly causing him problems due to his clothing. Still ‘isolated’, but at least they’d stopped whining about the boy’s appearance. Looking over at the two boys, who were sitting on the couch waiting to find out what was going on, he frowned. Harry looked far too much like a proper young girl now that his hair had grown out and Dudley had obviously been roughhousing based on the state of his clothing.

Definitely not roughhousing with Harry, though. _That_ lesson had already been learned after the first couple of times the neighbors had caught Dudley ‘picking on’ Harry in an overly physical manner. Petunia’s little fib about her sister’s clothing had endeared Harry to the neighbors and they weren’t willing to see the ‘poor boy’ as a troublemaker. Vernon had to admit that they probably had a point, since even he and Petunia had come to realize that the boy was unusually well behaved despite his freakish nature.

“Dudley,” Vernon said, getting the attention of both boys. “Mrs. Stewart claims that you don’t listen to her.”

“She’s boring,” Dudley answered. “She likes Freak more than me.”

That had Vernon’s eye twitching again, because he’d had multiple letters about how inappropriate it was for Dudley to refer to his cousin as ‘Freak’. “That doesn’t mean you should ignore her.”

“Don’t want to be like Freak.”

The twitching got worse, because the letter basically said that Harry was a model student that was likely to go far. _Despite_ obviously needing glasses that he didn’t have. Looking between the two, Vernon half considered punishing Harry for doing better than Dudley had, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He _knew_ it wasn’t the boy’s fault, and it would feel far too much like punishing an innocent girl for his upbringing. No, he needed to solve this another way, and he was reminded of a tactic used on him and his sister by their parents. It would even solve multiple problems at the same time.

“Harry,” Vernon said, surprising both boys. “The school nurse said that you need glasses, so we’ll be going to get you a proper pair tomorrow. I think we’ll have a couple of other things to pick up as well while we’re at it.”

Dudley didn’t know it yet, but he was about to lose his second bedroom where his toys were stored. That would solve the lingering wrongness Vernon felt from keeping what appeared to be a young girl in the cupboard, show his son that slacking off lost you privileges, and provide a better environment for his nephew to study in so that Dudley would have a proper target to overcome for rewards. Perhaps they should even give Harry larger portions at dinner when he’d behaved and Dudley hadn’t?

That _might_ be going too far, but he tucked the idea away for later revisiting.

* * *

Petunia shook her head as she looked at the two nine-year-old boys, though Harry had only turned nine today. They’d just come in from their outdoor chores, and from looking at them you’d assume that Dudley had done all of the work while Harry had merely watched. Her son was covered in filth, his hair was a mess, and he’d somehow torn a hole in his shirt. Compared to that was Harry, who was nearly pristine in his mother’s old shirt and plaid skirt. The only things she could spot wrong with him were that his knees were dirty from kneeling in the garden, some dirt smudges on his glasses, and a few hairs that had started to come out of the mid-back length braid his hair was in. She had no clue how he kept his clothing so clean, but he’d been doing it for years and it no longer surprised her. No, the only surprise was that he couldn’t seem to keep his _glasses_ as clean as his clothing.

Sadly, appearances aside, she knew well enough that _Harry_ had done more work in the end. Dudley had proven to have zero patience for gardening and was barely willing to tolerate pushing the mower around when Vernon let him and had supposedly been _raking_ today. How he turned that into the mess he’d ended up in baffled her, and she’d given up on hoping that some of her nephew’s innate neatness would rub off on her son. It obviously wasn’t happening.

“Go clean up before your father comes home,” she said, staring at her son and pointing at the stairs. Dudley groaned but complied, probably because he knew that if he made a mess then he’d have to clean it up too. Once he was on the stairs she sighed and looked at her nephew, who was in appearance the daughter she’d always wanted. Except that he was just as interested in many of the ‘boy’ things that Dudley was and kept showing her son up academically. “As for you, clean up your knees and glasses, then come upstairs. It’s about time that you took responsibility for your own clothing.”

“What?” Harry asked, obviously confused.

“We haven’t been buying you your clothing all these years, and I need the room in my closet.”

The boy was obviously confused, but she didn’t let that bother her. Instead she headed upstairs and dragged her sister’s trunk out of the closet. She’d removed the couple of things that she’d hidden in there already, it having been a perfect spot to hide things from Vernon as they’d discovered that only she could open it, but it had been taking up room in their closet for far too long and Harry was definitely old enough to deal with it now. More importantly, he should be old enough to deal with the rest of the story, to prepare him for what was coming in a couple of years.

She’d dragged the trunk nearly to the bedroom door by the time Harry made it upstairs, and she first decided to confirm her theory by directing him to open the latch on it. He did, and she nodded. That was something both Vernon and Dudley couldn’t do, though finding the latter out had been a stressful day. With that confirmed, she directed him to help move it into his room. It took a little work, as the boy wasn’t as strong as Vernon, but she didn’t want to wait and didn’t really want Dudley to know all of this right now either. They placed the trunk at the end of the bed.

Closing the door, she sat down on the bed while he remained standing. She gave him a look and gestured at the trunk. “Now then, that trunk was my sister’s, your mother’s. It’s filled with all of her clothing that our parents saved as we grew up, and is where I’ve been getting all of your clothing. I’m leaving you responsible for it now, including deciding what clothing to bring out.”

Harry looked shocked at that, looking over at the trunk in wonder. “My mother’s?”

“Yes. I imagine she was hoping to have a daughter before she died, but that didn’t happen. That said, the trunk itself is special, and you have to keep _why_ it is special a secret. Go ahead and open it up so that you can see what I mean.”

She watched as he opened the trunk, eyes going wider behind his glasses as he obviously realized that the trunk was far larger on the inside. “How?”

“Your mother, to my great annoyance, was a _witch_.” She’d failed to keep from spitting that out, which annoyed her, but she pushed that annoyance down. “You are almost certainly a wizard, and in two years are likely to get an invitation to attend a school of magic while Dudley will hopefully make it into Smeltings.” The latter was looking good _for now_ , but she was certain that it was only because Harry kept her son on his toes and helped tutor him during the school year. “The existence of magic is a secret, revealing that to those not allowed to know is punishable by magical law enforcement. Vernon and I are aware of it, myself originally because of your mother, but Dudley is not right now. I’d like to keep it that way until you get your school letter, even if he is _permitted_ to know because he lives in the same household as you.”

Harry nodded, then adopted a curious look. “Is...er...”

“Is that why odd things happen around you?”

The boy nodded, and she sighed. “Most likely. Your...outbursts have been far less significant than your mother’s were growing up, though I have no clue why. I know that you’ve had two pairs of glasses spontaneously repair themselves and am aware of at least three times that a broken dish has been fixed as well. Vernon also claims that you were likely responsible for Ripper’s injuries last year when Marge refused to keep control of the beast.”

Petunia wasn’t about to admit that she was _happy_ about that particular incident, as it had kept the woman from being willing to return for more than an afternoon. That wasn’t likely to hold indefinitely, but with any luck any future visits would be without dogs ‘for the safety of the dogs’.

Harry frowned. “So does that mean that other people can’t talk to the garden snakes?”

“Talk to the what?”

“The garden snakes. They like our yard because I don’t try to drive them off and keep other pests out of the garden for me in thanks.”

She felt her eye trying to twitch, but suppressed it. Especially since they’d been the _only_ house in the area other than that Figg woman’s that hadn’t had issues with mice for the past couple of years, and now she had a pretty good idea of why. “I don’t think that’s normal for a wizard either, but it definitely isn’t normal for those without magic. Be careful about when you do that.”

Harry nodded, and she noticed that he was slightly twitchy. Probably wanting to dig into the trunk to see what was in it. She stood up to leave him to it, needing to move a couple more things in her closet now that the trunk wasn’t in the way.

* * *

Vernon sat down on the bed, frowning. Dudley had asked him a couple of questions earlier that he _thought_ he’d had an answer for, but had stopped himself from saying anything citing a need to talk to Petunia. That had originally been because he thought that he needed time to think on the answers, but now his own fib had become reality. “Pet?”

“Yes?” Petunia answered from where she was putting her hair in rollers.

“When was the last time Harry did something...freakish?”

“Two weeks ago, as far as I know, but I think he started to work on doing little things intentionally in private shortly after I gave him Lily’s trunk.”

That had him blinking. “What? Two weeks ago? What did I miss?”

She turned around so that he could see her roll her eyes. “Do you really think that I helped a nine year old dye his hair red for Christmas with a dye that washed out perfectly that evening?”

“I hadn’t even realized that was his freakishness. You said it was your doing, even.”

“I gave him a picture of Lily that morning before you and Dudley were up and the emotional outburst caused his hair to change color in response. In hindsight, I was lucky that his reaction was that mild. It wore off when he went to sleep that night, I was able to see it fading when I checked on him.”

“Oh.” That...had implications. There had been a time when he’d considered if freakishness could be beaten out of the boy. That could’ve been bad if emotional outbursts were directly tied into freak incidents. He’d seen the aftermath of Marge’s dog attacking the boy and was fairly certain that he’d not have come out on top if it had been _him_ attacking Harry that day. Though Petunia had said something else. “What was that about little things?”

She sighed, put the roller she’d not yet started to put in her hair down, and sat down next to him on the bed. “I might’ve admitted that Lily had gotten a wand when she turned eleven and had needed it to cast magic. He got a curious look on his face then and I think he’s been practicing anyway. There’s a cracked bowl in his room that I catch him staring at on occasion, I think he’s trying to fix it intentionally like he’s done when things were dropped before. I’ve seen him pulling an unsharpened pencil to his hand as well, almost like he was trying to play with a yo-yo, but the two times I’ve seen it work he looked shocked that it happened as the end of the pencil bounced off of his hand. I _think_ he’s decided that things he _knows_ he’s done are fair game for doing without a wand, but I’m not sure and haven’t wanted to confront him about it.”

“Since when are you _comfortable_ talking about his...”

“He didn’t ask to be born a wizard. Lily didn’t ask to be born a witch either. I lost my sister to magic in part because of my jealousy, and I forced my own nephew to wear clothing intended for a young girl out of spite.” She paused, closing her eyes for a moment, before continuing. “Did you know that the school insisted that I try to get Harry to wear ‘proper clothing’ back in September?”

“I remember getting an apology letter about it, saying they wouldn’t try again, and figured that you’d gone and given them a talking to.”

“They didn’t give me a chance to. One of the staff, and I never found out who, tried to bypass us and take Harry shopping directly before the first letter had even arrived here to warn us. I’m under the impression that it didn’t go well, and that he used the same reasoning that I did with the neighbors and refused to be parted with one of the only links he had to his parents. Reasoning that I’m fairly certain I never told him about.”

That didn’t sound like the impetus for such a drastic change in her attitude towards magic. “Okay...”

“Vernon, the school asked me what would’ve happened if Dudley had ended up with Lily and James. Can you honestly say that they’d have let Dudley not know his own name until he started school? Let Harry think that Dudley’s name was freak? Would Dudley not have known _our_ names until he was nine? Would he have had to wear old clothing from one of us instead of having proper clothing of his own, only to refuse to give up said clothing because it was the _only connection he had to us?_ It took me two months to find a single picture of Lily, only finding one from when she was _eleven_ , and I don’t think I _have_ any pictures of James. But I know that Lily kept pictures of both of us and that they would’ve made sure Dudley had copies.”

He stared at Petunia, wanting to say that Dudley would’ve lived a horrible life with the Potters. But as much as he disliked James, and as freaked out he generally was about their abnormal abilities, he couldn’t see them treating Dudley anything like they’d ended up treating Harry. Worst case, if they felt they couldn’t raise Dudley properly, they’d have likely ensured that he made it to Marge...

Who probably would’ve been a _worse_ choice, as much as he didn’t want to admit it out loud.

Rubbing his eyes to avoid looking at Petunia for a moment, he grimaced. “Why didn’t you tell me this when the school called you?”

“Because I didn’t think that you were ready to hear that the school thinks that _we’re_ the freaks. They’ve had us on a watch list since the boys started attending, which I only know about now because they apologized for the entries on it from not believing us about Harry’s insistence on wearing Lily’s clothing. And I suspect that if they’d tried to go around us to get him into something proper before this year then even that would’ve come out as being a lie.”

“How do we fix this?”

“We can’t.”

He blinked, and looked at her. “What?”

Petuna sighed. “We can’t go back and change how we raised the boy and the damage is done. He doesn’t see us as parents, only his largely-uncaring aunt and uncle. The lie that I concocted when we didn’t want to spend money on him has become the truth and we’d likely be causing more harm trying to force him to wear normal clothes now. There isn’t enough time before he goes off to learn magic to reverse the isolation from his peers caused by how we treated him, even if I had any idea of _how_ to do that.”

“What are you saying?”

“We can do our best to treat him better right _now_ , but that won’t ever be enough to fix our mistakes.”

He nodded. “Is that why you insisted on getting him more gifts for Christmas this year?”

“Part of it, yes, though he really did need most of what we got him anyway. Giving them to him as Christmas gifts was honestly a shitty way to deal with it.”

“I suppose it was, wasn’t it.”

She gave him a look. “What brought this on, anyway?”

He grimaced again. “Dudley asked why he got ‘fun things’ for Christmas while Harry got ‘useful things’ instead. Admittedly, I think it was partially because he gets annoyed when Harry barters help with homework for access to Dudley’s toys, but I didn’t have a good answer for him either way.”

“Oh...”

“And then he asked why Harry has never seen the ocean. Apparently he’s the only one in his class that hasn’t seen it at least once they can remember.”

She groaned at that, and he felt that it was going to be a long night.

* * *

Petunia had enlisted Dudley’s help in coming up with a list of things that Harry hadn’t been taught growing up. Something that her son hadn’t wanted to do until she promised him an extra dessert. With that incentive he’d been able to produce quite the list, though most of it wasn’t actually a problem. At the same time, he’d also gone ahead and listed things that Harry could do but Dudley couldn’t. She hadn’t intended for that, but the way she’d worded the request _was_ easily interpreted that way and it was enlightening on its own.

The list had been cut down to things that were a significant problem in her and Vernon’s eyes. Harry didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, swim, throw a cricket ball properly, or even how to jump rope. Dudley hadn’t been taught how to cook anything, run the washer and dryer, repair torn clothing, use the vacuum, use a first aid kit, or braid hair. She’d had to question him on the inclusion of the latter one, but he’d apparently included it because the older brother of one of his friends thought that it was a good thing for guys to know even if they didn’t normally have the hair to do it themselves.

That Harry’s list of important items was entirely ‘playing’ activities and Dudley’s was almost entirely ‘chore’ activities didn’t escape them and they started correcting things in the Spring. Dudley’s first lesson was use of a first aid kit so that he could potentially bandage himself when he inevitably got hurt, with both boys being given a small kit of their own to carry with them. Harry’s first lesson was jumping rope, followed by Dudley helping teach him how to ride a bicycle in exchange for Harry letting Dudley learn the basics of braiding on his hair.

Vernon had opted to send both boys to get proper swimming lessons instead of trying to teach Harry himself, but had opted to teach Harry how to roll with taking a punch and how to fight back after one of the other boys in the class had decided to attack him for his ‘girly swimsuit’. They’d given up on Harry throwing a cricket ball properly though, the boy couldn’t aim one to save his life. On the flip side, Dudley had fought against learning how to do laundry or cook, but had at least gotten to be able to do his own laundry. Unlike with Harry, who Petunia was now ashamed had been doing quite dangerous cooking for a child for several years, they opted to put all but the most basic cooking lessons off until Dudley was older. They still ensured that he could make toast for himself, boil water, and follow simple directions on packages of frozen meals.

Their vacation visit to the beach had given Harry a proper view of the ocean, an intense dislike for sand, and inadvertently given Dudley his first concrete example of Harry being magical when the younger boy had apologized to a snake that they’d disturbed to keep it from biting them. Dudley had decided that it was ‘awesome’ and wanted to know what other animals were saying, only to be disappointed when he found out that Harry could only talk to snakes ‘because snakes are never around home’. She and Harry had both kept quiet about the snakes in the garden.

Despite all of that, Harry still didn’t have friends to play with and retreated into books more often than not. He would ride his new bicycle to the library and jog or ride around the neighborhood for exercise at Vernon’s urging, but otherwise resumed retreating into books when he had free time and wasn’t trying to practice his magic. He was able to summon a sharpened pencil to himself safely by September, and occasionally Petunia swore that his hair was a different color than it should be for an hour or two. That had led to a reminder that he had to keep his magic a secret before the boys went off to school again.

* * *

Vernon heard the mailman and sighed, as he’d just started eating. He looked over at the two boys, seeing that both had just finished eating. He knew that Petunia was upstairs. “Would one of you please get the mail?”

“I’ll grab it,” Dudley said, jumping up without putting his plate in the sink.

Harry rolled his eyes and collected his and Dudley’s plates, bringing them over to the sink to rinse them. He’d just started that when a thud came from the hall.

“IT’S THE APOCALYPSE!” Dudley yelled a moment later. Despite the yelling he walked back into the kitchen.

“What are you on about now?” Vernon asked, annoyed with his son’s rudeness and antics.

Said son waved one of the envelopes he’d carried back. One that looked like it was decidedly unusual for the modern age, honestly. “Harry has a letter!”

“I do?” Harry said, turning around. “I _never_ get mail, even when we try to send things to me ourselves.”

“This would be the second time in ten years,” Vernon agreed. “But it’s probably your school letter.”

Harry took the letter from Dudley, frowning at the front before opening it. He pulled several sheets of parchment out and looked over them once, then carefully read each a second time. Finally he frowned. “There’s no return address, just some talk about an owl. How are we supposed to send them anything?”

That had Vernon sighing. “Petunia feared that they’d screw that up. She knows how to get a letter to the blasted school through the normal post. Hopefully they’ll be willing to send someone to help, given that we don’t have any of their money and she doesn’t know how to get to their shopping center. That said, may I see the list of supplies?”

It only took a moment to look over things, and in doing so it was blatantly obvious that Harry’s _normal_ education was going to be completely ignored at Hogwarts. Petunia had told him as much, but he hadn’t wanted to believe her. How was the boy supposed to be able to function in the normal world without a normal...

It hit Vernon then. Harry wasn’t supposed to be able to function in the normal world, was he. The bloody magicals didn’t _want_ their kind in the normal world at all, and not teaching normal subjects would isolate the children just as badly as Harry had already ended up isolated thanks to the screw-ups with his upbringing. Petunia hadn’t lost her sister to the magical world due to any screwups on her own part, she’d lost her sister to the magical world because the blasted magical world _didn’t want their people in the normal world_.

“When Pet comes down we’ll talk about a couple of things,” Vernon finally said. “Including some extra shopping that we’re going to have to do before September.”

“Extra shopping?” Harry asked.

“Yes, nothing for your normal subjects is listed on there. If you’re going to keep ahead of Dudley like you’ve been doing then you’ll need study materials to bring with you. Oh, and we’ll probably want to see if fountain pens are suitable instead of the quills that your parents used, even if it’s only for while you’re here.”

“He needs a watch and probably a mechanical alarm clock too,” Dudley added, blushing slightly when they looked at him. “From what mum said, do either of you think that they’ll have electrical outlets?”

Vernon frowned. “No, they won’t, and now that I think about it I think the watch will need to be mechanical too. Though seeing if something suitable is available in their shopping district might be best.”

“What are you talking about?” Petunia asked as she came into the kitchen.

“Getting the boy mechanical timekeepers for Hogwarts,” Vernon answered, gesturing at Harry. “His letter came, you were right about them sending the wrong version.”

“Of course they did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Wizarding Fashion in this story:
> 
> I'm running a mix of book and movie inspired when it comes to Wizarding standards of clothing.
> 
> Hogwarts has uniforms that include skirts for girls and slacks for boys, along with ties and shoe differences, that haven't changed significantly in a while. It was seen as odd when first implemented at the recommendation of a Seer, but people stopped complaining after a few years.
> 
> Purebloods don't like to admit it, but wizarding fashion generally has to somewhat follow muggle fashion as the wizarding world is not self-sufficient, most importantly in that they buy food from the non-magical world as they don't have enough farmable land under their control and the land they do have tends to be used for more magical crops. This doesn't mean it lines up exactly, but it follows trends well enough that they don't look too out of place. This means that male and female clothing is recognizably male and female to both sides of the divide, though spotting the differences between male and female robes is harder for those not raised in the magical world. Your average witch or wizard can remove their robe and fit in just fine in the non-magical world.
> 
> There are magicals that haven't had any real reason to interact with non-magicals, mostly those that live in enclaves that are several levels removed from direct interaction with non-magicals. They tend to revert to a 'pure historical wizarding' mode of dress and have no clue about muggle fashion at all. This is before you get into those that have mental conditions or other issues that prevent them from recognizing proper fashion choices when told to 'dress muggle friendly' for things like the World Cup. Others are just out of touch, old enough for fashion to have changed significantly (possibly multiple times) and that never bothered to keep up.
> 
> And then there are those that simply refuse to believe that "normal wizarding without a robe" and "muggle" are, essentially, interchangeable. A completely mental disconnect that likely stems from a belief that wizards are always superior and thus can't be doing things the same way the muggles do.


	2. Year 1 - Chapter 1

Dudley looked to his right as his father grumbled about the traffic, noting the eye-twitch of annoyance on his face that indicated he was holding back on yelling. They were visiting Smeltings, ostensibly so that Dudley could see the school and learn how to get around it a bit. In reality it was because they were almost positive that someone from the magical world was going to visit today and his father didn’t want to be around another ‘freak’. Which was annoying, because Dudley _wanted_ to see more magic. Perhaps Harry would be able to show him some at Christmas, or next summer?

Luckily they’d known in advance that he and Harry would be going to different schools this year, allowing his cousin to more slowly force him to work things out on his own instead of providing a lot of assistance. Sure, that had meant that Dudley had dropped from fourth in their year to seventh, but it wasn’t like he’d ever expected to catch up to Harry. His cousin had been first in every class other than gym for pretty much their entire time in school, and had been the one to teach Dudley that there _were_ significant benefits to paying attention in class and even in reading things that weren’t assigned.

In hindsight, the latter was actually his favorite lesson, because without it he wouldn’t have found out so much about explosions or cars. Harry had _intended_ that lesson to cause Dudley to learn more about interesting school topics, of course, but that required finding school topics interesting in the first place. Though there was the year where he made it to second in the class standings for maths due to wanting to earn candy from his teacher for knowing things beyond what the book covered.

“Dad,” Dudley said after the twitch in his father’s eye had calmed down.

“Yes son?” his father answered.

“Do you think Harry is going to be bullied for his appearance at his new school?”

His father flinched at that, scowled, and nodded. “Probably, but he can handle it. It’s been well over a year since he came home with his hair filthy because someone had poured something on it at school or in the park, right?”

It was Dudley’s turn to flinch, as he’d done that a couple of times when he was younger. _Before_ finding out that Harry was scary smart with subtle ways to get revenge and dead useful as a tutor. “Yeah, though I think that’s more on Harry being aware enough to avoid those looking to get him, and there are times that I think he can dodge anything thrown at him. He even dodges spitballs shot at the back of his head sometimes.” Crap, the eye-twitch was back. What had he said?

A moment later his father took a deep breath. “I’d appreciate it if we _didn’t_ get reports of you doing that kind of thing at Smeltings, but don’t let the others run roughshod over you either.”

“Of course, dad.”

* * *

Harry had gone through his mother’s trunk and found her first Hogwarts uniforms. Or at least her smallest ones for now. They fit perfectly, like everything else he’d tried on from the trunk that was even remotely the correct size. He figured that it had to be magic in the clothing, similar to how he’d never needed to iron them and they barely got dirty even when he was in the middle of a horrible mess. Whatever the magic was didn’t protect the clothing completely but it made them far more durable than they should be by appearance.

It was Saturday, and Aunt Petunia thought that someone was likely to show up from Hogwarts today, so Harry had opted to wear the one outfit he’d been avoiding wearing. The same one that she had on in the picture that Aunt Petunia had given him. He’d even run his hand over his hair and pushed his magic to change it to a red that closely matched his mother’s in the picture as he examined himself in the full-height mirror that he’d been given for Christmas. It wasn’t a perfect match, admittedly. His face was not quite the right shape, his mother hadn’t needed glasses, and his nearly-waist-length hair was far longer than her just past the shoulders style in the picture. Despite those differences he was still proud about how close he’d gotten.

Once he was satisfied with his appearance, half wishing that he’d thought to ask for a camera so that he could take a picture, he checked that he had all of the uniform pieces in the bag he’d prepared with them. He hoped that they hadn’t changed the uniform since his mother had attended, but that had been years ago. The other kids at school had frequently commented on how out of date his clothing was as part of their teasing, above and beyond that he was a boy wearing girl’s clothing or with a girl’s hairstyle. He didn’t think that would be improved by wearing an out of date uniform in a new school, so he might need to give in and get new ones.

When he’d run out of things to check he sat down at his desk and picked up the history book that was sitting there. He’d promised Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon to do his best to keep up with, or ahead on, his normal schoolwork and figured that he didn’t need to wait until September to do that. He’d cycle through one topic a day on top of his magical classwork, hopefully only needing to write home for help once or twice a month since he wouldn’t be able to ask questions in class.

He’d lost track of the time when the doorbell rang, and he froze in the middle of reading a word. His aunt obviously answered the door a minute later, and there was some talk he couldn’t make out before she called up the stairs for him. Excited, he dropped the book on the desk and grabbed the bag with the uniforms in it before carefully heading down the stairs. No running in the house after he and Dudley had fallen down the stairs a few years ago, but he might’ve been moving quicker than he normally would.

It was just as he reached the bottom of the stairs when he heard a gasp and a whispered ‘Lily’, causing him to properly look at the visitor. The man standing by the door was thin, dressed in a black shirt and trousers. He had a large nose, shoulder-length but visibly greasy black hair framing his face, and his black eyes were wide with shock as he stared at Harry.

“Harry James Potter,” Aunt Petunia said, scowling at him. “You know you’re not supposed to wander around with your hair turned to other colors.”

Harry blinked, then remembered that he’d made his hair red. Blushing, he ran his hand over his hair to remove the magic and return it to its natural black color. “Sorry Aunt Petunia, I forgot that I’d changed it.”

The man had closed his eyes and taken several deep breaths, but opened them and turned to Petunia. “Why is he wearing Lily’s clothing? Where did he even _get_ Lily’s clothing?”

Harry perked up, because if the man had recognized the clothing then he must’ve known his mother. In contrast, Aunt Petunia slumped as she answered. “We made many mistakes raising Harry, and one of those was using the trunk of Lily’s clothing that showed up around his third birthday instead of getting him proper clothing of his own. I told the neighbors that he’d refused to wear anything else, they decided that he did so out of a desire to connect to his mother, and when he found out that they were his mother’s clothes my lie became the truth.”

“You _what?_ ”

“We treated him horribly until he entered school, barely treated him better for years after that, and only in the past two years have Vernon and I acknowledged and admitted to our mistakes.”

The man stared at Aunt Petunia, who stared back. They just stood there for a minute, before they both reeled back from one another. The man leaned against the door frame for a minute, clutching his shirt with one hand, before shaking whatever had happened off and standing back up. “I see.” He then turned to Harry. “Mr. Potter, I am Professor Severus Snape. I teach potions at Hogwarts, and was a childhood friend of your mother’s. Your aunt knew me growing up and may call me Severus, but I must insist that you call me Professor or Professor Snape for now.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Harry said, not holding his hand out as the man hadn’t made any motion to indicate that he wanted to shake hands.

“May I ask what you’ve brought down in that bag?”

“I collected what I think are my mother’s old uniforms. Have they changed much since she attended Hogwarts?”

Professor Snape shook his head. “The official standards haven’t changed in nearly a century now, and even that was a minor change to make things more permissible as I understand it. I assume you hope that you can wear them instead of purchasing new ones?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will need to check to see if the required charms and enchantments on them are functional. If not then we’ll need to have that refreshed at a minimum, but that would be far cheaper than purchasing new ones.” He turned to Aunt Petunia. “Do I have your permission to cast magic in your house?”

“Go ahead,” Aunt Petunia said, though she did turn away to not be watching.

Professor Snape pulled out a stick, pointing it down towards the floor. “Mr. Potter, please place the bag down and step to the side so that I’m not casting in your direction. It’s considered at best impolite to cast at or in the direction of another without their permission, barring specific circumstances such as medical needs.”

Harry placed the bag down and moved off to the side, then watched as the professor cast several times at the bag. He nodded when he was done, then turned to Harry. “Mr. Potter, the magic in the uniforms is quite healthy. I can only assume that’s due to proximity to yourself. I can also confirm that the magical name tags are intact and have already been cleared of your mother’s name and magical signature. To begin with, I suggest that I show you how to add your own name to them.”

It only took a moment for Harry to remove one of the robes, and the professor showed him the name tag. “Now then Mr. Potter, the process is easy enough and I doubt that you’ll have problems with it later. All you need to do is tap the name tag and push a little of your magic into it while thinking of your name. The enchantments in the name tag will handle the rest. Non-magical name tags are acceptable for any clothing you have that doesn’t have a magical one, but the magical name tags are more reliable.” Harry nodded, then reached to the name tag and tapped it like the professor had said. “No, Mr. Potter, you’ll need to...” he started, only to trail off as Harry’s name appeared on the name tag.

“I assume,” Aunt Petunia said, sounding slightly smug. “That you were going to tell him he needed his wand to do that?”

“Most students do, yes. Then again, most students don’t change their hair color with a swipe of their hands, and would probably have issues changing _just_ their hair while doing so.”

“He’s been working at duplicating anything he could remember having done accidentally. Which isn’t much, and he’s had mixed success. I think he’s only really gotten the hang of changing his hair color and moving things a bit.”

“Moving things?”

“He likes to bring pens and pencils to himself in particular, having practiced that a _lot_ , but I’ve seen him send a crumpled up paper curving impossibly into the wastebasket as well. He’d never have made the shot otherwise.”

The professor looked at Harry. “Mr. Potter, have you been practicing how to get your wand into your hand?”

Harry blushed, nodding even as he wondered how he’d been caught out that quickly by the man. “Yes sir.”

“Very good, far too many witches and wizards are helpless if they drop their wands. I’d give you points for preparedness if school was in session. Have you figured out anything that your aunt is unaware of?”

Looking at his aunt, Harry saw that she was just as interested as the man was. Given that, he nodded and held up his hand. Focusing, he made a ball of light appear on his finger. “I can do this, but if I lose focus it flickers and dies.”

Aunt Petunia scoffed. “So _that’s_ how you kept reading in bed after Vernon took away the flashlight.”

Harry shook his head. “I lose focus too much if I’m reading and it stops working, and _might_ have another flashlight that Uncle Vernon doesn’t know about. I, er, used to use this trick to see in my cupboard, before I even knew magic was real. I can also just be places that I’ve been to before.”

His aunt had flinched at the reminder of the cupboard, which didn’t surprise Harry. Professor Snape flinching slightly was a little more of a surprise. The man didn’t say anything about it though, instead shifting to a more surprised look at the latter statement. “Just be places? What you might call teleportation?”

“Yeah. I’d done that a couple of times to escape persistent bullies at school, plus once to get back _off_ of the roof before I got in trouble for being up there, and once I knew that magic was real I figured out how to do it intentionally. It was loud and jarring at first, far too squeezy and like a gun going off, but it’s a lot smoother now that I’m used to it.”

Professor Snape stared at Harry. “Would you mind if I cast a detection charm on you before you demonstrate by, say, appearing across the room?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

It took only a moment for the detection charm to be cast, and then Harry willed himself across the room. The original twisted into a pretzel sensation from when he’d first started was now more of a ‘dissolve and reform’, something that had taken a _lot_ of practice to smooth out, and the entire trip was a mere half-second total. He’d even remembered to turn himself around so that he was facing the two adults from across the room.

“That was definitely disapparition,” Professor Snape said, turning to look at Harry. “Though a variant I don’t recognize, the charm still registered it as such and it will be blocked by normal protections against it. Mr. Potter, while impressive at your age, that is an ability that is restricted to of-age wizards for good reason. I’m sure you’ll have no problem passing your exam when the time comes, but you will need to avoid telling others that you _can_ do that at all for several years. Further, many magical locations have protections against it, so you will need to be careful. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” Harry answered.

“Very well.” The professor then turned to his aunt. “Today is a fine day to take your nephew shopping. Would you like to join us?”

She nodded. “Vernon and Dudley are out for the day, so I have the time to.”

“Then I suggest that Mr. Potter brings those uniforms back to his room and we prepare to go.” Professor Snape then turned to Harry. “Though despite your statement earlier, I do think that Mr. Potter should have his hair in another color. Perhaps something that stands out a little less than red, such as a generic brown? There are...reasons that he should be keeping a low profile for now. I’ll explain them later.”

Harry looked at his aunt, who frowned but nodded when she noticed his questioning look. Nodding himself, he concentrated and ran his hand over his hair to change it to brown before picking up the bag of uniforms to run them upstairs.

* * *

They’d taken the Tube of all things to get to the magical shopping district, entering through a pub that Aunt Petunia couldn’t see at first. On the way Professor Snape had asked for permission to refer to Harry by his first name, at least while they were in the shopping district, so as to not draw too much attention from those listening for ‘Potter’. Harry still didn’t know why that was, but he went along with it for now. Nobody gave them a second glance when they’d arrived at the magical pub, even though Aunt Petunia had needed to be dragged inside by Professor Snape. They moved through to the back, and a brick wall next to some rubbish bins.

“Harry,” Professor Snape said. “I’m going to let you in on a secret that many people _do not_ know about this wall.”

“Oh?” Harry asked. “What’s that?”

“Most witches and wizards believe that this wall only opens up if you tap a wand on this brick here.” He pointed at a brick, then quickly explained four ways of identifying it. “What they _don’t_ know is that anyone with enough magic to see the pub can also just place their hand on the brick and it will open, which is a safety feature for those needing to get through to purchase a replacement wand. Go ahead and give it a try.”

Curious, Harry stepped forward and placed his hand on the correct brick. A moment later the brick spun away from him, the bricks around it following suit in an expanding wave of movement that eventually revealed an entire street behind the wall. The buildings sat at seemingly-impossible angles, the people were almost all wearing robes instead of normal clothing, and the things shown in all of the shops were incredible.

“Come along Harry,” Professor Snape said. “Before you can purchase anything you will need wizarding money, and for that we will be visiting the bank.”

They made their way down the alley, Aunt Petunia looking just as interested in the alley as Harry was, but eventually came to a large white building with visible armed guards outside. The guards were obviously not human, and Harry didn’t dare ask much more about them as they entered the building. He quickly read the warning on the inner doors before they opened, gulping slightly at the implied threat.

“Harry,” the professor said again, reaching into a pocket and removing a small key. The key was held out to Harry, who took it. “That is your vault key. You will want to keep it safe, and after you use it today you should only allow those you trust to carry it.”

“He has a vault?” Aunt Petunia asked, surprised.

“Of course. Despite the financial difficulties his family eventually suffered from due to their funding of the war, they didn’t leave him with nothing. I’ve not seen any statements personally, but was assured that he had more than enough for his school supplies for seven years.”

“Oh.”

“Now then, Harry, we shall get in line for a teller. When we reach the front you will simply state that you wish to visit your vault while presenting the key. Do not waste time on small talk with them unless they initiate it, which will likely only happen if they’re informing you of something in hopes that you will spend money. They will examine the key and likely call for another goblin to bring us down to the vault. Once there they will open the vault and you will place money into your purse.”

Harry fidgeted. “Er, Professor?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have a purse.”

The man blinked a couple of times, then nodded. “I apologize for not checking in advance. You are, however, carrying a handbag. It should do for now, we will arrange for a proper purse when we return to the surface and you have the funds to pay for it on hand.”

Harry nodded, and they got into one of the lines. It was only a few minutes before they were following a goblin named Blackclaw to what looked to Harry like a low-walled minecart with seating added on. The four got in, Harry ensuring that his braid wouldn’t get near the wheel, before without any warning or visible safety measures they were off. It was one of the best things that Harry had ever experienced, and when it was over he was disappointed. To his surprise, his aunt looked disappointed as well.

“Key,” Blackclaw said, and Harry handed it over. The goblin moved to the vault door and opened it, then stepped aside so that Harry could enter.

The first thing Harry noticed upon entering the vault was that it was piled high with coins, of at least three different types. None of which he recognized. At the same time he was in awe of the amount, and felt that it had to be worth quite a bit.

“Hurry up,” Professor Snape called. “We don’t have all day.”

Shaken out of his awe-inspired stupor, Harry looked at the coins before turning around. “Er, how much do I take?”

There was a pause, followed by a sigh. “My apologies again, I keep forgetting that you are new to all of this. I suspect that you will want at least a hundred and fifty galleons, those would be the gold coins. The silver ones are sickles and the bronze ones are knuts, you may want to grab some of each just to have them available but should not need many today.”

There looked to be more than enough to grab that much every year for two decades in the vault, without even digging into the piles to see if they were full of coins or somehow piled on rocks, so Harry quickly piled what he figured was probably four hundred galleons, a hundred sickles and fifty knuts into his handbag. He then carefully exited the vault while holding the handbag from the bottom due to the extra weight. Blackclaw closed the vault door and returned Harry’s key, then they made the return trip to the surface.

“I may need to join you every year,” Aunt Petunia said, grinning slightly as they got out of the cart. “Vernon hates amusement parks, doesn’t get the thrill of a proper roller coaster.”

“I suspect that he won’t need to make the trip next year,” Professor Snape argued. “At least if I’m right about how many coins are weighing down his handbag. Especially as he will likely want to ration his funds over the next seven years.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Blackclaw retorted while he was looking over the cart they’d just exited. “He only has access to the contents of the trust vault, restricted in amount by Ministry regulations due to his age. I’ve made plenty of runs to the backup vault, where all the monetary gifts sent to Gringotts on his behalf over the past ten years have been collected, and it will now refill the trust vault each year. For a small fee you can request a statement on both vaults, but will not be able to access the backup vault.”

“Oh.”

“There were a _lot_ of coins in there,” Harry added. “I barely touched the piles.”

Professor Snape looked surprised for a moment, but merely nodded to acknowledge that before gesturing back to the bank floor. “I am happy to hear that the wizarding public saw fit to return some of the funds that your family spent on the war. Sadly, we must now wait in line again so that we can get you a proper purse. You can obviously afford the ten-galleon fee Gringotts charges and the added security you get from the goblins is unavailable elsewhere, especially as they’re the only ones who enchant purses to automatically reject counterfeit currency should someone attempt to give you any. I don’t think we need to worry about the statements for the time being, unless you’re curious.”

That took another twenty minutes total, not bothering with the statements that would largely be useless information to Harry at this point. The new purse was apparently charmed to hold more than it looked like it should while weighing far less and automatically sorted coins and bills placed into it. It wouldn’t accept anything _but_ legitimate currency, specifically wizarding and British currency, and would only open for Harry or Gringotts goblins. The latter was in case something happened to Harry and the contents needed to be returned to his vault for next of kin. Aunt Petunia had wistfully looked at the purse, but had been informed that she didn’t have sufficient magic to be tied to one.

They then left the bank and headed down the alley, Professor Snape pointing out Madam Malkin’s shop where they would’ve gotten his uniforms if he had needed to pick some up. But since he didn’t need them they were going to move on to the next most time consuming stop, and that led them to Ollivander’s wand shop. The three entered, and Harry noted that Professor Snape immediately moved off to the side as though expecting something. Then again, he was just escorting them. Harry instead turned to the only other person in the shop, a man who was approaching them from behind.

“Good morning, sir,” Harry greeted the man, causing his aunt to jump in surprise.

“Good morning,” the man said, giving Harry a curious look. “I assume that you are here for the young lady’s first wand?”

“My _nephew_ needs a wand, yes,” Aunt Petunia answered.

The man blinked and stared more closely at Harry. “Ah. Yes. Terribly sorry for the mistake, Mr. Potter. That is an impressive color-changing charm on your hair, I completely missed it at first. Oh, where are my manners? I’m Garrick Ollivander, the owner of this fine shop and maker of fine wands. Shall we get started?”

Harry nodded, was pulled forward a little by the wandmaker, and was then measured by a floating tape measure while the wandmaker started examining boxes on the shelves.

* * *

The process of purchasing a wand had taken far too long, caused significant damage to the shop, and ended with Harry being told that his new holly and phoenix feather wand shared a feather with the one that had put the scar on his forehead. Which he had no clue what to think about. Professor Snape had then insisted that Harry could afford the unsubsidized price of the wand after the seven galleon price was given, which raised the price to twenty-eight galleons for the wand alone. On top of that he also had them pick up a book on proper wand care, a kit for caring for the wand, and a holster as well so that Harry wouldn’t be carrying the wand around in his pockets. Harry insisted on three different holsters, designed to be worn in different ways to go with different outfits. Then, just before they’d intended to leave, Harry had needed to replace the color changing charm on his hair that had been dispelled by one of the failed wands, only to be questioned for five minutes by Ollivander about how he’d accomplished it.

They’d then headed to a shop that sold second-hand items in an attempt to get a two-compartment trunk that Professor Snape had seen on sale the week prior, only to find that it was no longer available. They picked up a telescope that was far better than the standard student model for cheap, and got a much more basic purse for Aunt Petunia that only stored a bit more than it should’ve while weighing less. None of the other security features of Harry’s, but she could use it and it was supposedly enchanted against basic theft.

After that they headed to a store that specifically sold trunks. Harry ended up springing for a four-compartment model with wheels, a handle, and a built-in featherlight enchantment over Professor Snape’s insistence that he would never need that much room. Though he _didn’t_ say anything about purchasing bookshelves for one of the compartments. The backpack intended to allow a Hogwarts student to carry everything they needed for classes twice over was a must as well once Harry had seen it and would apparently automatically adjust itself to match his house colors when he was sorted.

Harry had then done his best to prove Professor Snape wrong about the trunk at the bookstore, buying the eight books on his school list, six others that had been recommended by the professor to cover additional potions topics, two he’d recommended on wizarding culture, three they’d found on wizarding history, a book on the history of Hogwarts, and one copy of everything the shop had in Arithmancy and Runes. Harry didn’t care if he couldn’t take the classes for those until third year, because the clerk at the trunk shop had stated that the trunk and bag had been created using those disciplines and he wanted to know more. They’d followed that with getting parchment, ink, and quills as lined paper and a biro weren’t acceptable for submitting homework or taking exams, though you could technically use anything you wanted for taking notes. Professor Snape had insisted that more expensive self-inking quills be purchased instead of the normal ones. Dip them in the ink once and they’d pull from that inkwell so long as it was nearby and had ink in it, even if the inkwell was capped. He’d also apologized as he said that fountain pens didn’t do something specific from a magic point of view and wouldn’t work instead of quills.

Next they’d ventured into Knockturn Alley, so that Professor Snape could show them a lesser known apothecary that sold far better ingredients at lower prices that sat next to a shop that he claimed sold much better quality scales and other supplies as well. He said that he was showing Harry this because “no child of Lily’s could have problems with brewing potions, and James had a passable amount of skill in the art as well”. While there the professor also bought Harry a portable harvesting kit as an early birthday gift. He claimed that it was something that every potions-master, budding or not, should carry on them at all times. At the same time, he admitted that Harry probably needed at least six months of Herbology and Potions before it would be worthwhile for him to wear it at all times.

That had essentially concluded the official shopping trip, but they made two more stops in Knockturn Alley. First to another book store, where Professor Snape insisted that Harry _only_ purchase two books. One on occlumency and one on legilimency, both of which had officially been purchased by Professor Snape using Harry’s money. They then went to an out of the way shop that sold magical corrective eyewear as correcting the eyes directly with magic wasn’t recommended for children. Harry left there with three new pairs of glasses that had charms to keep them clean, on his face, automatically adjust as needed as his prescription did, and to change in appearance just enough to match his outfit. One was normal for indoor use, the second were larger to better serve as ‘sunglasses’ for use outdoors, and the last was more goggles than glasses and intended for potion-making. All three fit into the same case from the shop, so that he could easily carry them all with him.

They’d then headed out of Knockturn and back to Diagon, only to be interrupted just as they’d entered Diagon Alley proper again by a _very_ large man carrying a small covered cage.

“Severus!” the man called. “Hold up a moment, would ye?”

“Who is that?” Aunt Petunia asked, staring at the approaching man.

“That is Rubeus Hagrid,” Professor Snape answered. “Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts.”

“Sorry to bother ye, but ey happen to have a gift here for yer student,” Mr. Hagrid said when he reached them, holding the cage out to Harry. His voice was also much lower, barely audible compared to the yelling he’d just been doing. “Happy early birthday Harry.”

“Er, thank you?” Harry answered as he took the cage.

The large man stood back up, his voice in what was probably a normal conversation level for him this time. “Ye're welcome, but ey need to go complete a task for Dumbledore. Good day.”

Harry watched the man dart off, surprisingly quickly for his size, and then looked at the cage he was holding.

“That’s probably an owl,” Professor Snape said. “Very useful, as they carry wizarding mail, though I do wonder both how Hagrid found us _and_ where he learned to be reasonably discreet. Still, I highly doubt that you have any of the essentials needed for an owl at home, so I suppose we have one more stop before we leave to pick those up.”

* * *

Harry stumbled back into the house after returning home for the _second_ time that day. They’d dropped everything off in his room, set up the stand for his new owl, and talked about why Harry was famous in the wizarding world for a bit. Most of it was news to both Harry and his aunt, after which Professor Snape had insisted on showing him the platform for the train at King’s Cross. Getting there and back had involved ‘side-along apparition’, and Harry had hated the outbound trip. It had been far worse than anything he’d done himself, even when he’d first started teaching himself intentionally. Professor Snape agreed that it was far better when you were in control of the process, and had then spent several minutes describing how to bring someone else along to Harry to have him make the return trip bringing both of them. Apparently he was experienced with teaching side-along and could prevent himself from being ‘splinched’ if Harry did something wrong.

The professor had stood there in shock once they’d appeared in the living room of number four, before turning to Harry and describing the result as the single most pleasant apparition he’d ever experienced. Better even than what a house-elf could do, whatever that was, and he made a comment about needing to get permission to see if Harry could teach others. This was followed almost immediately by warning Harry to _not do that without an adult witch or wizard giving him the okay_ , with or without bringing others along, because it was technically breaking the law and could get him into significant trouble.

“There are few additional things I feel that I should talk to you about,” Professor Snape said after they’d sat down in the kitchen with Aunt Petunia and had some tea. “Most importantly, I’d like to warn you about the houses of Hogwarts and how students are sorted into them. Most of this will not be in any of your books.” He went on to give a brief overview of the _ideals_ of each house, the _stereotypes_ commonly assigned to the houses, and the prejudices normally seen in inter-house politics. To sum it up, the Gryffindors were brave but foolish, Hufflepuffs were hardworking and loyal but would never amount to anything, Ravenclaws were studious yet uncreative, and Slytherins were cunning and ambitious while also being untrustworthy and frequently evil. All of which had examples and counterexamples at all points throughout the history of the school. Gryffindor and Slytherin were also currently enemies, with Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw being largely neutral in the conflicts between the two until one side or the other stepped too far out of line.

“Despite me being the head of Slytherin,” Professor Snape continued. “Thanks to the current political and social issues, I don’t believe that it would be safe for you to be in the house. I could only do so much as I cannot be everywhere at once. If not for that you could do very well in the house, but I fear that there are too many dangers there. To that end, you should also be wary of those _in_ the house. Especially my godson Draco Malfoy, whose father served the Dark Lord and escaped prison under claims of being mind controlled. I wouldn’t have agreed to his mother’s request to take care of him had I known how much like his father he’d become...still, Draco is almost certain to approach you at some point at the direction of his father, so be wary of him. At the same time, I feel that following your parents into Gryffindor would be a bad idea as well, if only because the house rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin would paint a larger target on your back and drastically reduce my ability to help you. To that end, I personally recommend asking the Sorting Hat to place you in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, but will do my best to support you and keep you safe regardless of where you end up.”

“Thank you,” Harry said.

“I would also like to explain why I had you pay far more than the eleven galleons that Ollivander originally asked for.”

“I could easily afford it, so it made sense to me to not be pulling from a fund that likely helps those who can’t buy wands.”

“The subsidizing of wands is, sadly, nothing so altruistic. Instead, the reality is that there is a spell commonly known as ‘the trace’ that is at a minimum placed upon every wand sold in every country in Europe that detects every spell cast in the vicinity of a wand. The identity and birthdate of the last person to cast a spell through a wand is reported along with the location and type of magic cast, with more accuracy if the spell was cast through the wand. The monitoring spells filter out anything reported through adult wands automatically, including duplicate reports from underage wands. The latter is because the assumption is that the adult was responsible or was instructing the child. The subsidy is actually because of a quirk of the magic behind the trace, in that it will only report back to the monitoring spells of the owner of the wand.”

Aunt Petunia frowned at that. “So they subsidize wands to retain partial ownership in the eyes of magic?”

“Yes. It’s also why magic allows them to do a number of other things regarding wands, but the trace is the largest portion. A wand’s price is generally split evenly between the purchaser, the government of the country the wand is sold in, and the International Confederation of Wizards to allow for efficient sharing of tracking information worldwide, albeit with a bit of a delay in the latter case. By insisting on paying full price you bypass that, having full ownership of your wand. It still has the trace on it, and all spells to check for the trace will return positive, but the trace is effectively negated by the fact that it will only report back to your own nonexistent monitoring system. As such, you can safely use your wand outside of school without the ministry knowing.”

“And they don’t tell anyone so that nobody questions it,” Harry surmised.

“Exactly, with wandmakers required by law to not tell anyone about it unless very specifically asked. Despite that, most of the old families know about it and take advantage of it, to the point where they ensured that wandmakers can _only_ report wand sales that tap into the subsidy and must keep who they sold unsubsidized wands to secret. The other thing that concerns me though was the _price_ of your wand, with and without the subsidy.”

“Ollivander wanted seven galleons at first, and then twenty-eight.”

“Yes. And with the normal subsidies the full price should’ve been twenty-one galleons due to the price being split three ways to ensure equal ownership and reporting. But it was to be split _four_ ways, meaning that someone other than the British Ministry and the ICW was subsidizing that particular wand, or possibly that someone else has approached Ollivander about subsidizing _all_ of his wands in some fashion. I suspect that it was specifically that wand though, given the man’s comments about its brother and the relative rarity of phoenix feathers. The only problem is that there’s no way for us to know who the additional subsidizer was.”

“Could it have been any wand that Harry purchased?” Aunt Petunia asked.

Professor Snape considered that for a moment. “That could very well be the case as well, but we have no way of finding out. Ollivander wouldn’t tell us if he agreed to the extra subsidy, especially if he was somehow forced into it. Legally or otherwise. It would certainly help someone else track him though, which could be the entire reason it was attempted.”

“Thank you for helping me dodge that,” Harry said.

“You’re welcome, though now that I’ve thought about it more I realize that in this case the cause _could_ be partially altruistic. The wand chooses the wizard, and phoenix feathers are rare. It could very well be that someone is subsidizing phoenix feather wands in particular to get them down to the seven galleons that Ollivander charges for his other wands. We have no true way of knowing, though, and I must now be off. Do remember to study occlumency, not only will it help your studies but it will also help you protect your secrets. Petunia, may I have permission to disapparate from inside of the house?”

Aunt Petunia nodded. “Yes, you can do your teleportation trick from here. Just don’t arrive that way without warning.”

“Thank you. Harry, I’ll likely see you again in September. Have a nice evening you two.”

Professor Snape stood up and vanished with a crack, leaving Harry and his aunt alone in the house. Though Vernon was supposed to return soon with Dudley.

“Harry,” Aunt Petunia said. “You should change your hair back to black, and then I want you to make a list of things that we need to pick up for you before you go to Hogwarts.”

“Yes Aunt Petunia,” Harry replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assuming I can keep this up to date with Sufficient Velocity, expect new chapters each Friday from now on.


	3. Year 1 - Chapter 2

Severus sat in his quarters with a bottle of firewhiskey, wondering when the world had stopped making sense. He’d originally accepted Minerva’s request for help with Harry, er, _Mr. Potter_ out of morbid curiosity for why the likely-spoiled and pampered brat would need an escort. Being handed the boy’s Gringotts key, which should never be sent by owl, had seemed to provide the answer. Only he’d been _incredibly_ wrong.

Seeing the boy looking so much like Lily had _hurt_ , and the initial assumption that it had been done just to screw with Severus had made quite a bit of sense for a minute or so. Until he’d skimmed Petunia’s memories with a silent legilimency attack, something that he knew he shouldn’t have done. He’d apologized to Petunia for it while the boy had been upstairs, and her only response was that she understood that the situation was far enough outside of the norm to warrant it. Before making him promise to ask before he did it again, of course, not that he thought that was going to come up again anytime soon.

The boy’s upbringing had been...unusual, and in no way healthy or proper. He’d been nowhere near spoiled, acted very little like either of his parents at that age, and yet he _looked_ so much like Lily. The combination had resulted in Severus doing his best to prepare the boy properly, more so than he’d done so with any other student, and even now he was realizing things that he’d forgotten. Nothing critical, most could be corrected when the term started at the school or via owl-order, but he’d started a list to remind him.

Then there was his investigation after he’d left the boy and Petunia. First he’d headed back to Diagon Alley to visit Ollivander, happy that he didn’t need to check Gringotts. He already knew that if you weren’t hiding your identity from the goblins or companions in the cart then it would treat a color changing charm as a mere cosmetic choice. Sadly, he’d gotten nowhere with the wand, Ollivander instead ‘distracting’ him by telling him about Hagrid’s visit to apologize for needing to change when the wandmaker could visit the Forbidden Forest. Luckily for little Harry, when he’d come up in that discussion Hagrid had taken Ollivander’s word on Harry trying to _not_ be identified, explaining the honestly decent subtlety in the delivery of the owl. Or at least decent for Hagrid, anyway.

After that he’d checked with the half-giant, whose plans had changed due to the centaurs and thus hadn’t expected to be in the alley at all today. The oaf couldn’t tell a lie to save his life most days, and seemed to have been genuinely surprised that Mr. Potter had been in the alley at all. Which meant that if anything the centaurs had seen something and decided to intervene slightly for whatever reason. That taken care of, he’d fetched a couple of items from his home and returned to Privet Drive to see what they could tell him of the wards there. After all, the wards had let him through despite the blemish on his arm. To his surprise, the wards appeared to be quite strong magically, but apparently either nuanced or specific enough to not cause him problems. He wasn’t a cursebreaker or warder and had no clue how to tell.

He’d then returned to Hogwarts and his firewhisky to think on things. This was going to be an interesting, and trying, year. Likely the first of seven, but he was certain he’d be able to handle it.

* * *

Harry hadn’t started with the occlumency book, but instead had read the owl care book first. Followed by coming up with a name for the snowy owl that was apparently female despite the lack of darker spots in her feathers. She was quite intelligent, had accepted the name Hedwig, and needed amazingly little direct care provided that water and possibly food were made available for her. Only once he knew the basics for his new companion did he read through the occlumency book.

He started a pattern of working on his non-magical work in the mornings and going through his magical books in the afternoon, though he’d ended up taking his birthday off from the new schedule. Uncle Vernon had taken the day off and taken him shopping for a proper watch that should be able to handle Hogwarts. Aunt Petunia had apparently asked Professor Snape about that at some point and he’d recommended a non-magical watch that would then be ‘enchanted’ at a specific store in Diagon Alley but had recommended against an alarm clock due to being too likely to disturb dorm mates. Finding the watch was the easy part, getting Uncle Vernon through the alley to drop it off and pay for the work had been the hard part. They’d returned home to a surprise party.

After that Harry ended up visiting Diagon Alley every weekend, though Uncle Vernon declined to join them. The first weekend was because the assigned potions book recommended protective equipment that they hadn’t picked up and that didn’t exist in his mother’s trunk. It could’ve waited, but Harry hadn’t wanted to wait in case it wasn’t all off the shelf items. They had been, and at the same time the two had come across a magical first aid kit. Familiarizing himself with that during the week had resulted in a desire to check his magical immunizations, due to a warning in the kit about waiting at least two weeks after your last one before using a couple of the potions. So the next weekend they picked up the watch and obtained directions to Saint Mungo’s and instructions on how to summon the Knight Bus to get there.

They _hadn’t_ gotten a _warning_ about the Knight Bus, though, and Harry was going to avoid that monstrosity whenever possible. Hopefully he’d eventually find a form of magical transportation that _wasn’t_ insane, because waiting until he was allowed to disapparate was going to take far too long. Either that or he needed to find a loophole that allowed him to disapparate sooner without possibly getting into trouble.

One week of awful-tasting potions had followed the visit to Saint Mungo’s, after a rant about ‘irresponsible professors’ who didn’t bring those raised in the muggle world in. Harry had sent a letter to Professor Snape with Hedwig explaining the extra visits to the alley so far and to warn him about the irate healer that might want to give him a talking to. His response had included an apology for forgetting the immunizations and praise for purchasing the protective equipment. It also said that it meant that Harry would escape the school mediwitch giving him the same potions at the start of the year, with an added warning that the first aid kit should _only_ be used at school in an emergency. Otherwise he was liable to piss off said mediwitch, and apparently nobody wanted that, not even the professors.

It was around then that Harry had started trying to do magic at home with his wand, having run through enough of his new school books to feel he had a good grasp on things. He found that the things he already did took less effort when using the wand, but outside of those he couldn’t quite get things to work without the wand movements and at least whispered incantations. Which made no sense to him, and the assigned reading told him nothing as to why that was. Nor did any of the extra books that Professor Snape had recommended. Something _might_ be in the pile of Arithmancy and Runes books, admittedly, but Harry wasn’t quite prepared to try jumping into those with everything else he was working through.

The next weekend visit to the magical world had Dudley tagging along and had started at Saint Mungo’s for a post-potions checkup. They’d determined that Harry was all set, but had noted that they’d been unable to send him a follow-up owl. There was nothing to be done until Monday, but they were given a pamphlet on how to get to the Ministry of Magic so that it could be looked into. After that they headed to Diagon Alley so that Dudley could see the place once. That was also the first visit that had them leaving without anything new.

Their visit to the ministry had luckily _not_ included Dudley, in Harry’s opinion, because the phone booth public entrance was annoying enough with him and Aunt Petunia. They were barely paid attention to as they went through security to the DMLE, at least once Aunt Petunia had stated that she wasn’t a witch when asked for her wand. They hadn’t even asked Harry for his. Once in the DMLE office they’d had to wait in line until an obviously overworked officer of some kind had removed the block, charged them two galleons after informing them that the block was a standard block used on young children, and sent them on their way without even bothering to learn either of their names.

It was only that Thursday that the effects of the removal of the mail block had been noticed, when _years_ of normal mail that had been ‘lost’ in the normal post had been delivered all at once. Most of it was old enough that it could just be discarded, but a number of things that had never shown up were found in the piles. There were also Birthday and Christmas cards for every year from someone named Remus Lupin, most containing several pounds for Harry. The return addresses changed multiple times, and the last one for Harry’s eleventh birthday didn’t have a return address, so they weren’t sure how to send a message back. Or who he even _was_ , though Aunt Petunia thought that there was something familiar about the name.

That weekend’s visit to Diagon Alley had been an attempt to find a magical solution for keeping food cold, but there were enough students with their families running around doing school shopping to make it impossible to accomplish anything and they’d given up. Instead they’d picked up a small insulated bag and planned on making a bag of ice to put in it with Harry’s lunch for the train ride to Hogwarts. Investigation would be needed to determine the best way to bring or obtain lunch on the trip back in December, which could just be buying lunch on the train if that was an option.

The last week before the two boys went off to their schools had a lot of running around to ensure that everything was set for Dudley to head to Smeltings, though mostly because of an accident with juice that had ruined a number of things. Harry ended up with plenty of time alone, and had finished reading all of the assigned and professor-recommended books for Hogwarts while also finishing up his normal homeschool work through the start of October, at least by the recommended schedule he had for it. He had no clue how his occlumency was going, despite going through the exercises every day, but that was supposed to take two or three years to get proficient in so he figured that there was plenty of time for it.

August 31st was the last trip made to Diagon Alley, _very_ early in the morning. Harry and Aunt Petunia braved the Knight Bus to get there before any other last-minute shoppers. They found the alley almost deserted, and were able to get a sizable bag of wizarding sweets to add to the normal snacks to be shared on the train as an aid to making friends. Harry had lamented that without a better cold box he couldn’t bring ice cream as well, but it wasn’t like Fortescue’s was even open at that hour to pick some up. They took the non-magical way back home and added the magical sweets to the already-gathered bag of other snacks. After Dudley had tried a couple, anyway, and decided that he was going to avoid magical treats going forward.

* * *

“Hurry up boys!” Uncle Vernon called from downstairs. “We need to get Harry to King’s Cross before the crowds start to gather!”

Harry suppressed the urge to rush as he brushed out his hair. A couple minutes ago Dudley hadn’t even been _dressed_ , after all, so he had plenty of time to finish the more complicated braid he was putting his hair in before he headed downstairs to put his lunch and snacks into his bag. Hedwig was already gone, flying to Hogwarts instead of taking the train, and everything else was already packed. His trunk was even in the boot of Uncle Vernon’s car, placed there just before breakfast.

Sure enough, Harry had braided his hair, packed his brush away in his bag, and gotten his lunch and snacks packed away long before Dudley was dragged downstairs by Uncle Vernon. Aunt Petunia had used the extra time to talk to him and apply some concealer to his scar ‘since it was so famous’, mumbling about how they should’ve done so for their trips to Diagon Alley. But people were likely going to be looking for the scar today _because_ he was famous for it and she hoped that between the concealer and having him change his hair to a dark red instead of black that he could find a friend or two that didn’t care about his fame.

Despite having waited on Dudley, they were still plenty early enough to have beaten the traffic on the way to King’s Cross. Uncle Vernon had made a show of helping get the trunk out of the boot and into the building when they got to the still largely empty station, despite how light the trunk was thanks to magic.

“Good luck,” Uncle Vernon said, lightly slapping Harry on the back once they were inside. He then looked around and lowered his voice. “I, er, won’t be able to get you _to_ the train, right?”

“No,” Harry agreed. “Professor Snape said that I couldn’t even drag someone else in with me, though the...apparition point, I think it was? It would work if an adult was willing to bring you in, but we don’t have someone who can do that available and I _really_ don’t recommend the experience.”

“Right. Do your best, write to Petunia so that she won’t panic, and don’t forget to keep up with _all_ of your studies.”

“Yes sir.”

Ten minutes later Harry had made it through the barrier into the magical platform, and unlike when he was there with Professor Snape there was a train there. Harry stared at it for a couple of minutes, before shaking himself and heading to board it. Nobody else seemed to be around, beyond a couple of workers checking the train that merely nodded to him. Well, one kept an eye on him until he had the trunk into the train, likely intending to come over and help if he’d had trouble, but went back to his work as soon as it was obvious that Harry wasn’t having problems.

The train had to be bigger on the inside, if only a little, given how much room there was to move around in the hallway despite the size of the compartments. Harry wheeled his trunk down a couple of carriages, so as to not be right in the front, before claiming a compartment with a small table shortly after he’d identified a restroom. He ran into a problem with his trunk then, in that he was too short to get it into the overhead rack, but a little push with his magic was enough to get it in. Luckily he’d already been informed that someone else would collect the trunk when they got to Hogwarts, presumably house elves if the wizarding culture books were to be believed.

With his trunk stowed, he slipped into the restroom to change into his uniform while nobody else was around. He also checked the concealer on his scar and considered how frequently he was running around with his hair colored. He’d spent most of the time he’d been in the magical world so far with his hair colored brown, including at the Ministry of Magic and Saint Mungo’s, and the dark red would hopefully help distract anyone who’d picked up on his description from those visits. At least until they got to Hogwarts, where he’d gladly remove the makeup because he really didn’t like the feel of it on his skin.

He returned to the compartment mostly suitably dressed, placing his bag and folded robes down on the bench before sitting down next to them at the table. A minute later he had his maths book and workbook out, figuring that he might as well get some ‘normal’ work in before too many magicals showed up.

* * *

Harry had obviously lost track of time, because he’d not noticed others start to show up until someone had knocked on the doorframe to the compartment. Looking up, he saw a foreign-looking girl in plain black robes, like the ones he wasn’t wearing yet, with someone else behind her that he couldn’t quite see. “Hello.”

“Good morning,” the girl replied. “Are you a first-year too?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“May my sister and I join you, or are you expecting friends?”

“To my knowledge you’re the first other student I’ve spoken to, so I’ve got nobody to wait for.” He waved at the other bench. “Feel free to sit down, I don’t need the whole compartment.”

She stepped in and bowed lightly. “Thank you.” The other person, her apparently-identical sister going by looks, then worked with her to put both of their trunks into the overhead rack before they closed the door to the compartment.

“I’m Padma,” the sister introduced herself when they were done. “And this is my slightly-rude sister Parvati.”

“Hey!” Parvati said. “She left the compartment door wide open!”

“Which is why you were only _slightly_ rude, centered almost entirely around not introducing us _before_ asking if we could join her.”

“I’m Harry,” he greeted, figuring that interrupting them would be a good idea. And ignoring the all too common mistake with his gender for now.

“Odd name for our generation,” Parvati said after a moment. “But not unheard of, and I hear much more common in the coming years. Are you muggle-born?”

“No, though I grew up in the muggle world.”

“Why would you ask her that?” Padma asked her sister as they sat down.

“Because she’s using a pencil, paper workbook of some kind, and an obviously muggle book,” Parvati answered, as though it were obvious. “I don’t think most witches raised in the magical world would even _recognize_ a pencil, let alone be bringing one to Hogwarts.”

“Oh, I’d not noticed that.” Padma then took a closer look at the small table. “So Harry, what is that you’re working on?”

Harry suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “My uncle insists that I keep up with my normal schoolwork. This is some of the maths that should be taught this year.”

“Ooooh. May I see?”

He made note of the page he was on, then passed the book to Padma. Parvati rolled her eyes at her sister’s interest, but said nothing about it. Padma missed it as she flipped through the book, eyes going wide as she did so.

“Harry,” Padma finally said. “How long have the muggles been teaching basic _arithmancy?_ ”

“What?” he asked.

“This is a muggle book full of basic arithmancy exercises! Father wouldn’t teach me any of it, but I recognize it. How long have they known about it?”

“It’s just basic maths that everyone is supposed to learn in the next year or two, not connected to magic at all.” Though he was going to have to pull out one of the arithmancy books that he still hadn’t looked at and check that later. He might have a better shot at understanding the subject than he’d expected, if basic maths was part of it.

They ended up chatting about what was taught in muggle schools compared to what pre-Hogwarts schooling magicals got until the train departed, with nobody bothering them until shortly after they’d started moving. It was then that a freckled, redheaded boy opened the compartment door, without knocking, and looked over the three of them.

“Excuse me,” Parvati said, standing up.

The boy ignored her, and mumbled something about girls before walking away. He didn’t even bother to close the compartment door.

“That was rude,” Parvati grumbled as she closed the compartment door. “Who does he think he is?”

“I’m not sure he thinks,” Padma retorted. “Or at least he didn’t have a look of any significant intelligence just now.”

Harry shook his head, but paused when his stomach apparently decided that it had been long enough since breakfast for a snack. Blushing slightly, though it didn’t seem like the girls had noticed, he reached into his bag and pulled out the mixture of wizarding and muggle candy he had, only to find that there were some granola bars as well. Likely courtesy of Aunt Petunia knowing he wasn’t the biggest fan of candy. He happily took one of them, then held the bag out to the girls. “Would either of you like a snack?”

“I don’t recognize a lot of these,” Padma said after looking in the bag.

“A lot of it’s muggle.”

“Ooooh,” Parvati said, suddenly far more interested in the bag. “I don’t think I’ve had muggle candy before. We weren’t allowed any on our trip last summer. Can we really have some?”

“Go for it,” Harry confirmed, shaking the bag slightly.

Both girls looked through the options for a couple of minutes before taking a couple of items each, though one of Padma’s choices was a granola bar like Harry’s instead of candy. The bag was put away before he grabbed three of the six bottles of water he had, one for each of them. He’d only just placed the third one on the little table when the compartment door opened again.

This time the interruption was a pale, slender boy with blond to nearly white hair. There appeared to be two or more others behind him, but they barely had time to react before he’d looked over them. Scowling slightly, he bowed his head minutely as he spoke. “My apologies, I appear to have the wrong compartment.” With that said he closed the door and left.

“I hope that isn’t going to be a pattern,” Harry said after a moment.

“At least he had the decency to close the door,” Padma said. “Does it have a lock?”

They determined that there was a simple lock on the door and engaged it, then started on their snacks. Harry had no problem with his granola bar, and Padma liked hers after finding the sour candy she’d grabbed not to her liking. Parvati seemed to like the cinnamon candy she’d grabbed and ended up holding on to the chocolate she’d taken for later. That led into a discussion of the various foods, particularly junk foods, that the two worlds produced.

Half an hour later they were interrupted again, though this time the person knocked. Without, it appeared, trying to open the door first. Harry stood up, unlocked the door, and opened it to find a slightly chubby blond boy. “Yes?”

“Er, sorry to interrupt,” the boy said. “Have you seen a toad? Trevor got away from me.”

“I don’t think I have.” Harry turned to look at Padma and Parvati. “Have either of you seen a toad?”

“No,” Parvati answered. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” the boy replied. “Sorry to bother you.”

He moved down the carriage to the next compartment, likely to ask them about his toad, so Harry closed and re-locked the door.

* * *

They’d gotten some pumpkin juice from the trolley witch shortly before lunch, all three having brought something to eat. Padma and Parvati had examined the insulated bag as the three ate, wondering how the muggles had figured out how to make something like it. Harry hadn’t been able to tell them the specifics, just that if you put something hot inside then it could keep it from cooling off quickly as well. Parvati had finally had her other candy, and Harry had put away his maths work as he didn’t think he was going to make any more progress anyway.

Parvati had taken the lull in conversation as an excuse to ask Harry about his hair, leading to a discussion on magical versus muggle hair care and cleaning products. Harry had admitted that he braided his hair because it didn’t like to behave otherwise and had learned that there were potions that could help with that. He didn’t think he cared that much, but did make sure that the scrap of parchment Parvati had given him with the name of the potion was secure in his bag after Padma had commented that it had been invented by a Potter. He’d need to check later to see if it was his family or some other Potter family.

The discussion had just shifted to makeup, Parvati looking scandalized at Harry’s comment that he didn’t like makeup, though without saying that it was based entirely on not liking the little he was wearing, when they were once again interrupted by someone knocking on the door. Padma got up to answer it this time, revealing a bushy-haired girl. “Yes?”

“Hello,” the girl said. “Have any of you seen a toad? Neville’s got away from him.”

“I believe that he checked with us earlier, and we’ve kept the compartment door closed for the most part so I doubt it snuck in here since.”

“Oh. Sorry to bother you then.”

The girl moved down the carriage as Padma closed the door, and Parvati decided to grill Harry some more. “So why don’t you wear makeup? You obviously take good care of your hair and you’ve even ensured that your glasses match your uniform! A little makeup in the right places would make you look incredible.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “My glasses are charmed to match my clothing and I really don’t do that much with my hair. As for makeup, I don’t like the feel of it on my skin.”

“There’s no _way_ you’ve tried magical makeup then. If done right you could go a couple of days before you even remember that you have it on.”

“Not that you _should_ ,” Padma interrupted. “That’s just asking for skin problems.”

“I _know_ Padma. But the point is that it isn’t noticeable at all. You just have to get into the habit of cleaning it off before bed, and cleaning your face every day shouldn’t be a hardship.”

“I still think I’ll pass for now,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I’ve never cared about that kind of thing before, and I don’t see myself starting to now.”

“Leave her alone,” Padma said as her sister went to argue more. “ _If_ you end up sharing a dorm with her then you can see about wearing her down, but on the train isn’t the place.”

“I doubt that will happen,” Harry muttered, probably a little too loud.

“I could so get you to wear makeup,” Parvati argued.

Harry shook his head. “I meant that I doubt we’ll share a dorm.”

“Oh. Why not?”

Padma scoffed. “Because she’s probably destined for Ravenclaw and you’ve stated that you want nothing to do with a house full of studying-obsessed weirdos.”

Well, that was another good reason, and Parvati’s immediate response was to stick her tongue out at her sister. He decided to run with it, at least for now. “Where do you two think you’ll end up?”

“She’s going to be in Ravenclaw,” Parvati said as she pointed at her sister. “Has to with all of her interest in books. I’m personally hoping for Gryffindor, if only because it’s the only other house in a tower. What about you?”

“I’m hoping for Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, probably Ravenclaw. Though I honestly hadn’t thought about tower versus dungeon for dorms.”

“We’re both hoping that our dorms have a window to the southeast so that we can wake up with the sunrise,” Padma explained. “We find it hard to wake up without the sun.”

Harry shrugged. “I’ve never had that problem.”

* * *

It was getting dark when they had their last interruption of the trip, though they didn’t mind the prefect checking up to ensure that everyone was ready for their arrival in Hogsmeade. In fact, it was a very welcome warning for Harry.

“Finally,” he said, getting up and grabbing his bag. “We’re close enough to Hogwarts that I can wash the concealer off of my face.”

“Concealer?” Parvati asked. “What concealer?”

“The stuff my aunt put on me this morning and made me promise to leave on until we were close to the school.”

That obviously didn’t answer her question, given that both girls decided to follow him out of the compartment. He ignored them and headed for the restrooms, though was grabbed by one of the two as he reached for the door to the wizard’s room.

“That’s the wrong door,” she said, and he was embarrassed to realize that he couldn’t tell which one she was now that they’d moved around. “You want the witch’s room next to it.”

Harry shook his head, and pulled his arm out of her grip. “Sorry for not bothering to correct you earlier, but despite my appearance I happen to be a wizard. I’m just used to being mistaken for a girl.” He then opened the restroom door and stepped in before the two girls could say anything more.

Digging out the wipes he’d been given for removing the concealer, he spent a couple of minutes at the sink getting it all off. That also reminded him that his hair was charmed dark red, so he ran his hand over it to return it to its normal black. Once he was happy with his face he used the restroom, not knowing when he’d next get a chance to, and washed his hands. He found the hallway empty when he left the restroom, and the two girls hadn’t returned to the compartment yet either when he got there.

Shrugging, he made sure that what little had been removed from his bag was back in it and was pulling his robes on when the girls returned.

“What happened to your hair?” one of them asked, though he was expecting that to be Parvati.

“I removed the color-changing charm,” Harry replied as he smoothed out the robes. Anti-wrinkle magic was very nice, and he was certain most of his clothing had it now.

There was a moment of silence, and he was just turning around to see if something else was wrong when the compartment door was hastily shut and locked. The sister that had done so then turned around and stared at him, eyes going wide a moment later. “You’re _Harry Potter!_ Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because I didn’t want to be swarmed by people who only want to know me because I’m famous. Besides, you didn’t introduce yourselves with your last name so I didn’t think I needed to.”

Both sisters flinched, though at different points, before the one who he’d thought might be Parvati (if he’d kept track of them properly) nodded. “Right, sorry. I’m Parvati Patil.”

“And I’m Padma Patil,” the other sister answered. “Though that doesn’t explain why you’re dressed like a witch?”

“Well,” Harry said. “I grew up with it, so for me it’s normal. Besides, my mother’s clothing trunk is the only significant thing I have from my parents.”

“Wait,” Parvati said. “You’re wearing your mother’s old clothing?”

“Yeah.”

“When that hits the Prophet things are going to _explode_ , aren’t they?”

Harry blinked. “The Prophet?”

“Magical newspaper,” Padma answered. “The Daily Prophet. I don’t have a copy with me, but you can owl them for a subscription if you want to pick one up.”

“Oh. Would they really care that much about me?”

The two stared at him like he was crazy for thinking otherwise, which probably meant that he was the ‘right’ kind of famous for ‘celebrity gossip’. Hopefully they weren’t too interested in him?

“Harry,” Parvati said after a moment. “You were front-page news this morning because nobody had seen you shopping for Hogwarts.”

“And on the front page at least a dozen times in the past month with speculation,” Padma added. “Though I think I know why nobody saw you shopping.”

Great. Hopefully the Prophet was at least better than the gossip-rags Aunt Petunia read?


	4. Year 1 - Chapter 3

Rubeus double-checked that the boats wer ready for the first-years. Havin a few more than strictly necessary helped more often than not and it wasn’t a perblem if some wer empty. Made it easier to fish students out of the lake sometimes, honestly. He then grabbed the lantern from his boat and started up to the station, already able to hear the train approachin.

With any luck he’d be able to recognize little Harry. He’d only been able to spot him in the alley because the lad was with Severus and Ollivander had warned him about the brown hair. If the lad had gone with somethin other than his natural black or that brown then it might be hard to spot him. Not havin his father’s telltale hair, or perhaps just keepin the Potter rat’s nest under control with length, made him blend in much better than most Potters.

Though there was one thin that was still buggin Rubeus. Why did Severus seem so interested in what he thought of Harry’s clothing? The lad wasn’t runnin around naked.

* * *

“We can still meet to study and hang out if we’re in different houses,” Padma said as they made their way off of the train. “God knows that Parvati will need the study help, so we were going to be meeting up next weekend anyway. Probably in the library on Saturday morning, feel free to join us.”

“Though not _always_ in the library, since you need to be dragged out of your books every so often,” Parvati countered. “We’ll just need to find other places to meet up as well. That’ll be easier if Harry ends up with you in Ravenclaw, but we’ll make it work either way. She’s far...er, I mean _he’s_ far too interesting to talk to.”

“You just want to get him in makeup, don’t you?”

“I still maintain that it would work wonderfully, though I understand some of his attitude against it better now. It just means that I need to ease him into it.”

“Good luck getting past my complete lack of desire to try it,” Harry said.

“Firs’-years!” a familiar loud voice called. “Firs’-years over here!”

The Patils led the way towards the voice, Harry trailing behind just because it was easier to follow in the gap the sisters made. It didn’t take long for them to reach the large form of Mr. Hagrid holding up a lantern.

“Firs’-years!” Mr. Hagrid yelled again, then happened to look at Harry and the Patils. He leaned down for a moment and spoke at a more normal level. “There ye are, Harry. Back to black, ey see. How are ye doin there?”

“I’m doing fine, Mr. Hagrid,” Harry replied. “And thank you for the owl.”

“Just call me Hagrid, everyone does. And you're welcome, figured you could use an owl. They’re very useful. Hold up a mo', w're still missin a couple.” He then stood back up and looked around before bellowing again. “Firs’-years over here!”

It wasn’t long before Hagrid had all of the first-years and brought them down to a collection of fifteen boats on the lake shore, though they were distracted from that a moment later as the castle itself came into view over the lake. The view was awe-inspiring, with none of the drawings or pictures in the books Harry had doing it justice. He didn’t get to dwell on it too long though, before Hagrid was herding them into the boats.

The fifteen boats, or fourteen if you excluded the one with an empty lantern hook that could only fit Hagrid, were more than enough for them to spread out three to a boat, but eight boats ended up with the ‘no more than four’ anyway. Harry and the Patils were in one of the three boats that hadn’t filled entirely, and the three empty boats followed along with them when Hagrid started them across the water. Several minutes later they’d arrived at an underground harbor and climbed out onto the shore.

They were brought up some stairs and handed off to Professor McGonagall, who brought them to a chamber where they were to wait until the sorting would start. That included an obvious to Harry, but possibly missed by those who needed it, ‘clean yourselves up to be more presentable’ directive. As soon as the door closed behind her they started talking among themselves, saying little of consequence until the two rude boys from the train apparently decided to give them a floor show.

“Looks like Potter is a no-show,” the blond one said loudly. “Though I don’t know if he’s merely a squib or doesn’t dare show his face around his betters.”

“You take that back,” the red-headed one yelled. “Just because you couldn’t smarm your way to Harry’s side doesn’t mean he isn’t going to be here.”

“Weasley, I checked every compartment and loo on the train. Potter wasn’t in any of them, and you _have_ to take the train to Hogwarts. He isn’t here and isn’t coming.”

Harry leaned over slightly to one of the Patils, having lost track of which was which again, to whisper. “Should I speak up to let him know that he just didn’t recognize me?”

“No,” the girl replied. “He’ll figure it out soon enough, I think.”

“Good point.”

The two boys nearly made it to physical blows before the entire group was interrupted by a group of ghosts floating into the room, followed almost immediately by Professor McGonagall returning. Her stern look was enough to get them all into a reasonable-enough group for the trip into the Great Hall. As they did, Harry could hear one of the others saying something about the ceiling. Then a stool was brought out and a hat placed upon it, and the hat started _singing_.

Why the hat sang, Harry didn’t know.

When that was done they were called up one at a time to wear the hat. Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones went to Hufflepuff after only a moment each, Terry Boot took a little longer to go to Ravenclaw. Eventually the bushy-haired girl that had helped look for the missing toad, Hermione Granger, went to Gryffindor. The boy, Neville Longbottom, went there as well, but tried to run off with the hat. The rude blond, apparently Professor Snape’s godson Draco Malfoy, went to Slytherin before the hat could even properly settle on his head. Padma went to Ravenclaw as expected, and Parvati made it into Gryffindor before Sally-Ann Perks ended up in Hufflepuff.

“Harry Potter,” was called by Professor McGonagall next, and he stepped forward even as the hall went dead silent. Only for her to give him a quick look. “Miss, I called for Mr. Potter.”

He nodded. “Despite my appearance, I assure you that I am Harry James Potter.”

The woman stared at him for a moment, before her eyes softened and she nodded. “My apologies, Mr. Potter.”

He sat down on the stool as the students broke out into whispers, only to have all the sound blocked out by the hat settling on his head.

“Very interesting,” said a voice, likely directly into his head. Or at least, he’d not heard anything when the others had worn the hat. “And not quite, I’m actually whispering into your ears. That’s part of why I’m blocking out other noise right now. Good deduction though, you’d do well in Ravenclaw. That said, you could also do with the friends that you’d likely get in Hufflepuff, bucking the norms like you seem to be doing shows that you could do well in Gryffindor, and you’ve got a drive to prove yourself that would do you well in Slytherin. Though Professor Snape was correct that you’d have a hard time in the latter two houses, and I’m unsure if your chats with the garden snakes would be enough to convince your peers to treat you properly in Slytherin.”

Frowning slightly, Harry thought about that. He didn’t want to pin any hopes on something that vague, though why his chats with the garden snakes would possibly help him was beyond him right now. Figuring that the hat was obviously reading his mind, he focused on ‘talking’ to it without speaking. _“I think I’d prefer Ravenclaw, Professor Snape indicated that they were the best choice for someone who likes to read as much as I do. Besides, Padma was already sorted there.”_

“That’s not bad reasoning, but I can tell that you care far more about fitting in than you want to admit to yourself. Ravenclaw might accept your studious nature, but they also tend to be less...flexible about those that don’t fit into their normal molds than they’d like to admit. The Patils are also more likely to draw others to you if you don’t share a house with either of them, for that matter. No, for you it had better be HUFFLEPUFF!”

The last word had been shouted, just like for all the other students, and Harry took the Sorting Hat off and headed for the Hufflepuff table. The hall had gone back to dead silence immediately after he’d done so, as though the choice of house shouldn’t have happened. Harry had originally aimed for a large gap along one side of the table, but was practically pulled down to sit next to Susan Bones, on the other side of the girl from Hannah Abbott.

A moment later Professor McGonagall called for Oliver Rivers and whispering started up again.

“Were you dressed like that when you visited the Ministry?” Susan asked, taking Harry by surprise.

“Er, yes,” Harry answered. “How did you know I visited the Ministry?”

“My aunt is the head of the DMLE and saw your name on the visitor logs as having entered through the visitor entrance, but couldn’t find anyone who saw you or any other record that you’d been in the building. She’s been trying to figure out who screwed up.”

“Oh.” Thinking back, Harry shrugged. “I suppose there were two people, then? My aunt took me, and when asked for her wand she said she wasn’t a witch. They didn’t even ask for my wand after that, just waved us through. Then the person who removed the mail block on me did so without asking for our names at all, just took the two galleon fee and sent us away.”

“But a mail block removal is only a sickle,” a boy on the other side of the table said.

Susan shook her head. “No, a ‘discreet’ removal without taking down names is two galleons and is very common with mail blocks. Many people don’t want official records to say that they can now get mail, and if they didn’t have the forms for it filled out to be filed then discreet would’ve been assumed. The visitor badges only say ‘spell checking’ as well, so very little evidence of why you were at the Ministry gets kept.”

“Oh.”

They paused to clap for Sally Smith making it into Hufflepuff, then another girl butted in with her own question. “ _Why_ are you dressed like a witch?”

“I grew up wearing girl’s clothing,” Harry answered, only to get questioning looks in response. “My mother’s clothing trunk is the only significant thing I have from my parents.”

There was a moment of silence from those around him, during which he noticed that the rude redhead, Ronald Weasley, was taking a while to be sorted.

“How is that possible?” Hannah finally asked, leaning around Susan to do so. “You’re the boy who lived!”

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t even know about _that_ until after I got my Hogwarts letter.”

Weasley eventually got sent to Gryffindor, quickly followed by Blaise Zabini going to Slytherin. The headmaster stood up at that point, said a few nonsense words, and then food appeared on the tables. Harry filled his plate and started eating, happy that everyone else was doing the same. It seemed that nobody around him knew how to use magic to talk understandably with their mouth full, or if they did they weren’t willing to use it just to ask him questions that he couldn’t answer.

After he’d had some of his meal, Harry took a look at the staff table. He didn’t recognize most of the adults there, admittedly. Hagrid had snuck in at some point and sat at the end of the table, he recognized Professor Dumbledore from pictures, and Professor McGonagall had sat next to the headmaster. Further down was Professor Snape, who looked up at Harry at the same time as the man next to him.

“Gah,” Harry said as his scar lit up in pain.

“What’s wrong?” one of the boys across the table from him asked.

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “I was looking at the professors when my scar started to hurt.”

“Hey Gabriel,” a girl nearby called further down the table. “Can you let Professor Sprout know that Harry here needs to have Pomfrey check on his scar?”

“It feels much better now, really.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the boy said. “Unexplained pains, even momentary ones, can be a problem, and your scar hurting suddenly is definitely abnormal. I doubt it’ll matter, but which professor were you looking at?”

Harry figured that he wasn’t getting them to put it aside. “Professor Snape and the man in the turban next to him.”

The boy looked up at the staff table. “Snape and Quirrell? Huh. If one of them was involved then it must’ve been Snape.”

“I don’t think it was Snape, he’s nice.”

 _That_ got a reaction from the older students, and the girl who had called down the table turned to do so again. “Gabriel, add a general health check. Potter said that Snape is _nice_.”

* * *

The end of the feast had included a more proper welcome, standard announcements, and a worrying bit about the third floor corridor that the upper years dismissed as being the kind of thing that had been said about previous areas of the castle being renovated or repaired. That was followed by the reciting of the school song. Definitely not singing, and the headmaster looked _pleased_ at the sheer number of contradicting tunes being used.

“I wonder what the headmaster would do if someone convinced everyone to use the same tune,” Harry mused. “Given how pleased he looked at the horror show that just was.”

“That...huh,” a boy said. “I might have to mention that one to the twins. The effort needed to pull it off might keep them busy enough to let up on everyone for the year.”

Harry didn’t get to say anything more before the first-years were gathered up to be led to their common room. The entrance to the kitchens was pointed out as they passed it, with a comment that they would be shown how to open it later in the week, before they came to barrels stacked up in the corridor. Those actually turned out to be the entrance and the group was shown how to tap the correct barrel to get in, as well as how to expand it from ‘crawling’ to ‘large enough to walk through’. One of the prefects also demonstrated the anti-intruder system for them, after grumbling about having drawn the short straw.

The common room itself was round, had lower ceilings than the hallway did, and had many plants among the copper, yellow, and black. Though there were also round windows, they couldn’t possibly open to the actual outside and instead showed a sunny, grassy field. The furniture all looked well cared for and comfortable as well. He didn’t get a chance to explore anything right away, though, as the ten of them were gathered into a set of couches and chairs for a ‘welcome to the house’ speech and question session. Included in that was a comment that prefects would help them set their dorm room windows to simulate sunrise at whatever time they wanted, until they had enough magic under their belts to do that themselves.

In addition to that, apparently they’d be taken in groups of two or three during the coming week to be shown various useful routes around the castle, some ‘Hufflepuff-only’ secret passages, and some ‘unused’ classrooms that had been set up for spell practice for at least thirty years now. They assumed, but no current Hufflepuff knew of someone who had checked, that the other houses had similar areas that they’d claimed.

They then transitioned to ‘now to show you your dorms’, which is where things went weird.

“What are we doing with Potter?” one of the older girls asked, apparently having stuck around just to ask that question.

“He’s going into one of the dorms with the other boys?” Gabriel, the prefect who’d done most of the talking, answered. “Don’t know which one yet, we haven’t gotten that far.”

“But he looks far too feminine for that!”

“Why does that matter? It isn’t like we could put him in with the girls.”

“But...”

“What’s going on here?” a woman asked, having come in when the focus was on the two older students.

“Professor Sprout,” Gabriel said. “Jasmine seems to think that Potter shouldn’t be placed with the boys due to his appearance.”

“For his own protection,” the girl, Jasmine apparently, argued.

“I see,” the professor said, before turning to the first-years. “There’s a record low five per gender this year. I assume you haven’t gotten to pairing them off yet, since everyone is still in here.” She turned to the first-years. “Boys, the Hufflepuff dorms are currently set to default as doubles due to low student attendance. With an odd number of you we’d normally make that one double and one triple, to avoid showing favoritism by giving one person a single. That said, we have enough rooms to make it two doubles and a single right now. If you have no objections then we can give Potter his own room?”

“I don’t mind sharing with others,” Harry noted.

Professor Sprout nodded. “Which is commendable, but we also have to take into account the comfort of others. Thus, I’d like to hear the opinions of the other four boys.”

The other four took a moment to discuss things, but came to the conclusion that they were fine with sharing a room with Harry, but would also be fine with him having his own to make others more comfortable about his safety. While openly questioning _why_ he would be less safe with roommates, not that they got an answer on the last one.

“Okay then,” Professor Sprout said. “We’ll go with three rooms for the peace of mind of the older girls. Give me a minute to have the elves reconfigure things, then we can figure out how the four of you are pairing off. Mr. Potter will get the furthest in of the rooms, though I’m sorry to say that I don’t know if he’ll get to spend the night here yet.”

“What?” Harry said.

“Professor Snape asked me to have Madam Pomfrey check on you after you appeared to be in pain at dinner, and Gabriel here sent me a message asking for much the same thing. It will be up to her if you return here for the night or spend it in the hospital wing.”

“Oh.”

* * *

The girls had been led off to their dormitories while Professor Sprout had done her thing, and then the boys were led to a hallway. It was apparently a loop, each year having a hallway coming off of the outside of it, and they’d keep their hallway until they graduated. Prefects and the head boy, when a Hufflepuff, were in the middle. The current first-year hallway had three doors, two opposite each other and one at the end. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernest Macmillan ended up on the left, Wayne Hopkins and Roger Malone ended up on the right, and Harry was in the room at the end. Each room had a bathroom of its own and their trunks were delivered immediately after the choice of who was taking which bed was made. There was also a wardrobe and desk to go along with each bed, plus magical bed warmers that could be used in case things were too chilly.

Gabriel walked them through how to use the showers, which had their own quirks compared to even normal wizarding households, and set the ‘window’ in each room as they wanted it to start with. Harry was the easiest there, as there was nobody else to need to agree with. Once that was done Harry was taken to the hospital wing, Professor Sprout pointing out the landmarks along the way so that he’d know how to get there and back in the future.

“Very unusual,” Madam Pomfrey said after twenty minutes of casting spells at Harry while Professor Sprout waited off to the side. “There’s _something_ there, but I’m afraid that I’ll never figure out what on my own.

“Severus said that Mr. Potter was looking at him and Quirinus when the incident happened, and that Quirinus had looked up at the same time,” Professor Sprout explained. “He’s concerned that it was actually a reaction to something Quirinus did, as crazy as that sounds.”

“He’s been acting quite oddly since he returned, so I’m not sure if I blame Severus for thinking that. Still, this happening once isn’t enough of a connection.” Madam Pomfrey then waved her wand and summoned what looked like a muggle notebook from the other room. “Now then, for now I’d like you to keep track of when this happens, where it happens, and anything you notice that might be part of a pattern. I’ve got a biro in here, I assume you know how to use it?”

“Of course, ma’am,” Harry answered, taking the notebook. “Do you really think this is important?”

“Any unexplained pain is important to deal with, especially when a trained mediwitch can’t identify the cause. This isn’t significant enough to justify bringing in a full healer from Saint Mungo’s right now, but I need much more information to narrow down potential causes. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now then, there are a couple of other things that I noticed in my scans. You’ve gotten the standard immunizations that Severus originally warned me that he’d forgotten about, so you’re all set there. You’re slightly underweight for a wizard, and using magic will burn more calories than usual, so don’t hold back at meals. I’d highly recommend ensuring that you stay for dessert every night at dinner as well, honestly. Lastly, I’m not sure what caused it, but there’s a minor spell residue on your hair. I don’t think it has anything to do with the pain you suffered, but I wasn’t able to determine what it was.”

Harry blinked. “That’s probably from the color-changing charm I had on it earlier.”

“Color-changing charm?”

Nodding, Harry ran his hand over his hair to change it to brown. Madam Pomfrey and Professor Sprout both looked shocked at that, and the mediwitch cast a few more spells before nodding herself. “That would appear to be it, and I can confirm that it wouldn’t have caused the pain I noticed. Impressive spellwork too, but with that confirmed I think we’re done. You can spend the night in your dorm room and I’ll check with you as to when your scar hurts over the next week or two.”

* * *

Harry had taken the time to unpack his clothing before going to bed and was up bright and early the next morning. It was only as he got ready for a morning jog that he realized that he wasn’t sure where it was safe to do so, and had to shift gears to the ‘stormy weather’ indoor exercise plan for the day instead. Once he’d finished with that he took a shower and got dressed for the day. He decided that he had plenty of time, so sat down and wrote a quick letter describing the events of the previous day to send to Aunt Petunia. He could add to it later if he didn’t find time to locate Hedwig to send it off with her. That went into his pocket before he grabbed the Introduction to Arithmancy book he had and headed to the common room.

Entering the common room, he found that he’d been right to grab the book as nobody else seemed to be up yet. He sat down in one of the incredibly comfortable chairs and opened his book, quickly getting caught up by it as it almost immediately started to answer questions he’d had about spells and wands, at least in a vague manner. He retained enough awareness to note the five first-year girls entering the common room and claiming a group of chairs across the room from where he’d sat, seemingly doing each other’s hair for the day.

“Damn,” a familiar voice said from behind Harry, and he looked to see Gabriel had come out into the common room carrying his bag. “I was hoping that if I got up early enough that I’d be able to slip out to breakfast before any of you lot were up, and now I’m responsible for getting you...six to breakfast safely.”

“Six?” Hannah asked, sounding confused.

Harry raised his hand and waved from his chair, realizing that he wasn’t incredibly visible in it. He made sure he knew where he was in the book and put it in his robe pocket as he stood up.

“That’s not fair,” Susan whined, causing everyone to look at her. She pointed at Harry. “His hair is _perfect_. Harry, who helped you?”

“Nobody?” Harry answered. “I’ve got lots of practice doing my own hair.”

Susan frowned, and fingered her own hair, but Gabriel chuckled. Once everyone looked his way he grinned. “There are a couple of upper year girls that have elicited similar whining from their dorm mates, several have been pressured into giving lessons on how they do their hair without assistance in the past couple of years.” He then turned to Harry. “Though if we’re talking about hair anyway, you’re back to black this morning, but I swear that you had brown hair when you came back with Professor Sprout last night. Are you a metamorphmagus?”

“A what?”

“Able to change your form with only a thought, we had one in the house but she graduated last year. Her hair color was often a sign of her mood.”

Harry shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ve done anything like that. It was just a color changing charm.”

“Really?”

Rolling his eyes, Harry ran his hand over his hair to change it to brown. “Yes. See?”

There was a moment of silence before Susan was next to Harry, staring at his hair. Harry wasn’t sure if she’d used accidental magic to almost-teleport or if it just seemed that way. “You can do silent and wandless magic? Auntie said it can take _years_ to get things down silently!”

“Potter,” Gabriel said, interrupting Susan. “You were raised in the muggle world, right?”

Harry nodded. “Yes.”

“And I’m willing to bet that a bit of magic you did before getting your letter included changing your hair color?”

“Yep.”

“And of course, you were determined enough to figure out how to do it _again_ , right?”

“What are you getting at?” Susan asked.

Gabriel chuckled. “Those raised in the muggle world are _far_ more likely to figure out how to do things on purpose after they pull them off on accident. They don’t see wands being used by their parents and thus don’t make the association that they won’t be able to control their magic without one. We’ve got two muggleborn siblings in sixth year who can summon items, Ravenclaw has a muggle-raised half-blood in fifth year that can levitate books in a proper reading position and turn their pages, and last year one of the graduating Gryffindors could untie knots by snapping their fingers. You usually get one or two things that were learned wandlessly before ever seeing a wand, but that doesn’t generally translate to other spells without a _lot_ of work.”

“Oh.”

“And they’re a hundred times more likely to get underage magic warnings because they’ve usually gotten used to using the tricks and don’t think of them as breaking the rules because they aren’t using their wand. The real question here is if Potter can do that to _someone else’s_ hair.”

“I changed my aunt’s hair once,” Harry admitted.

Gabriel grinned. “Have you tried it on something that isn’t hair?”

That had Harry blinking. “No?”

“You should give it a shot sometime, but not now. I’m hungry and we should go up to breakfast. Though you might want to change your hair back to black.” Harry did so, but then Gabriel paused, looking between the bag he’d brought with him and the first-years without bags. “Right, none of you lot have your stuff for the day. _Officially_ you’ll get your automatically-updating timetables this morning, and that’s why today is the only day you’re supposed to sit at the Hufflepuff table for a non-feast meal. _Unofficially_ speaking, all houses should have the week’s timetable for all years posted on the notice board Sunday night. Come take a look to see what you’ll need before lunch so that you can grab it before we head to breakfast. It’ll save you time later, but remember that things shift around from week to week.”

Harry joined the others in checking the posted timetable, then headed back to his room to put the book he had away and quickly pack his bag with everything he’d need for classes. Once he was done with that he headed back out to the common room, finding that he was returning just as the last of the girls was.

Gabriel gathered them up and led them out of the common room. “Now, I said that you’re expected to sit at the Hufflepuff table today, which implies that you can sit elsewhere normally. In practice it’s considered rude to sit at another house’s table unless you were invited by someone of that house. We encourage visitors, but Slytherin discourages them and Professor Snape has been known to take points off of those of other houses sitting at their table. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw vary by year group on how accepting they are, but their heads won’t take points off unless you’re an actual disruption. And if someone from the house makes a stink they’ll generally take points off of them instead.”

He stopped and took a look to make sure that they were still with him, then pushed on a brick. That opened a hidden door in the wall. “This is a slightly faster way up, you’ll get more instruction on using it when you get your small group tours. It can’t really be used to get down though as there don’t appear to be ways to open the doors in the other direction.”

They went up the stairs in silence, with the door at the top having a simple handle to open it. Gabriel led them to the right after they’d all made it out, the door shutting behind them and vanishing into the wall. “Okay then, the other thing to remember is that while we have uniforms, the school rules only say that they need to be worn to class and feasts. Many students wear them all the time, even on weekends, but that doesn’t mean that you have to do so. Now then, find a seat and eat up, you’ll need your energy. One of us prefects will ensure you get to your first class without getting lost. We’ll rotate who picks you up after a class when your next one is in a new location.”

The girls took the end of the table and Harry took a seat just past them, not next to them but close enough to talk if they wanted to include him. He’d just barely finished filling his plate when he heard a gasp from the girls, looking up in time to see Hedwig descending to him. She landed on the table, and he grabbed some bacon for her. “Hello girl, I see you made it. Are you up for a trip back with a letter for Aunt Petunia?”

Hedwig gave him a short bark and a nip, as though insulted that he would think that the answer was anything other than ‘of course’. Harry grinned and fished the letter out of his robe pocket, carefully tying it to her leg. “No rush, if you want to wait till tonight then I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“She’s beautiful,” Megan said as Hedwig snatched some more bacon.

Harry nodded. “I wasn’t sure how to find the owlery to send my letter, but I should’ve figured that she would know to come to me instead. Probably would’ve pestered me until I agreed to write Aunt Petunia a letter, even.”

Hedwig barked and bobbed in agreement, then took off, leaving Harry to eat his breakfast.


	5. Year 1 - Chapter 4

Albus watched the door to his office close before he sighed. The first morning meeting had been enlightening in several ways, not all of them pleasant. What little they knew about the ‘sudden pain’ Harry had experienced was worrisome, though he’d not admitted what his suspicions were. Quirinus would need to be watched a little more closely, but until they had more concrete information they wouldn’t be able to act.

Still, if Riddle _was_ already in the castle, regardless of where, then he needed to move up getting the mirror into the final chamber. The trap wouldn’t work nearly as well without that time waster at the end, and Quirinus knew far too much about most of the other traps due to having helped get the troll down there. Not the true nature of them, admittedly, and it was a good thing that he’d only trusted _that_ to the four heads and Bathsheda. But they wouldn’t present nearly as much of an obstacle for getting to the final chamber as they would’ve otherwise, and changing them now would reveal their knowledge that Riddle might be in the castle already.

Outside of that little debacle, some of Harry’s childhood had come to light. Severus had been a unique mix of candid and blunt when asked questions that had somehow painted Albus in the worst light while also making the Dursleys look like victims instead of part of the entire problem. Luckily, there was one thing that he’d been able to state to at least throw _some_ of the blame off of him. They’d had to agree that blaming him for not giving Petunia a way to contact him made no sense when she’d obviously known how to do so after Harry’s Hogwarts letter had arrived. He couldn’t be blamed if she’d never used that knowledge before then.

Petunia’s failing aside, he would need to dig out a couple of things to return to Mr. Potter. The cloak, of course, but he’d been reminded of a couple of other items that had been entrusted to him as well. Sadly, he’d never gotten around to asking Lily _why_ , as they’d not done anything useful despite being obviously tied into the wards somehow. It was a mystery that perhaps Mr. Potter could solve, assuming that he could remember where he’d _put_ them and they hadn’t self-destructed like the other two likely-examples of the same magic had done so on him when examined. Probably in one of the vaults, which would at least speed up the search a bit since he’d only placed things in two of them in all of his time as Headmaster.

Then there was the thing that baffled him. Why was everyone other than Hagrid so worked up about how the boy _dressed?_ If he was comfortable in the clothing he wore and they covered everything needed then the details shouldn’t matter, and none of what he’d personally seen seemed objectionable anyway. Albus couldn’t figure out why they were all so worked up about it. Then again, it could be that he’d missed yet _another_ swing in fashion. Could his own preference of a kilt under brightly-colored robes have fallen out of style?

* * *

Professor Sprout had come in with the other three heads of house and immediately handed out timetables to those already there before going to start on her own breakfast, though she stopped to check with Gabriel on the lack of the other boys. Harry couldn’t hear his answer, but it seemed to satisfy her, and ten minutes later one of the female prefects brought the four missing boys in with her. Ernie and Roger both looked like they were still half asleep, but they were there.

It appeared that the entire school had arrived by the time that the four heads of house came back down from the staff table to hand out the rest of the timetables. There was some grumbling about what classes people were starting with from the Gryffindor table, making Harry wonder why they’d come down without knowing that ahead of time. Unless they liked the extra exercise that heading back up to their tower would give them?

That reminded him that he needed to figure out what he was permitted to do for his own exercise. Having finished eating anyway, he got up and moved down the table to the nearest prefect. “Miss Sinclair?”

“Wha?” she said, looking up. “Oh, please just call me Caitlin. What do you need?”

“I’m used to doing exercise in the morning, jogging and such.”

“Ah, and you want to know what you can do about that before breakfast, right?”

“Yes, please.”

“You’re allowed out of the dorms at six in the morning, five thirty for those on a quidditch team with practice scheduled before six thirty. You can run along the grounds, but shouldn’t run in the hallways unless you can convince Filch to approve a running path. He’ll want a good argument for it, and even if you have one he’ll probably still reject it. But if you try and he does approve it then please let others know so that they can join you if they want to.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Harry went back to his seat to wait for when he’d be shown to History of Magic.

* * *

“Now then,” Caroline said, looking around the empty halls as they approached the History of Magic classroom. “As annoying as it is, this year you lot are starting with a double of the single least useful class the school offers.”

“What?” Megan asked. “Are you saying history is useless?”

“No, I’m saying that the _class_ is useless. Professor Binns is a ghost, and has been teaching the same lessons ever since he died. If you _somehow_ pay enough attention to him for long enough then you’ll notice that he’s directly quoting your book _and_ that he never leaves chapters twelve through nineteen. Ignore him and study the book yourself so that you’re ready for the end of term exams. Don’t bother with the homework, he can’t grade it and assigns the same grades to the same slots on the roster regardless of if you turned anything in. I’d tell you to skip, but you’ll get in trouble for doing so as attendance is magically recorded, and you can’t goof off entirely for the subject because Professor Dumbledore grades the end of term exams.”

Ernie sighed. “Why is he the teacher if he’s useless?”

“Tradition and the board of governors not wanting to pay the salary for a replacement professor that teaches something they see as a waste of time. They’d probably drop the class entirely if ICW agreements didn’t force it to be one of the core classes.”

Susan looked around. “Why did you bring us here to tell us this?”

Caroline shrugged. “For some reason Professor Sprout doesn’t want us telling the other houses this. I think it’s a deal she made with the other heads, and she reminds us prefects every year. Regardless, read your books, take notes on things to look up in the library later, and you should be fine. Now let’s get to the actual classroom.”

It didn’t take long to reach the classroom, and Harry flipped through the book to see if he could find where the professor was. That was harder than expected, as apparently the current point was in the middle of a chapter, but he found it and confirmed that it was a word for word quote. That confirmed, he flipped back to the point he’d read up to and continued reading from where he’d left off.

* * *

Harry rubbed his scar after Defense Against the Dark Arts. He’d already logged that he’d had spikes of pain whenever Professor Quirrell _turned away from him_. Why that would be the case was impossible for him to determine, but hopefully someone else would be able to figure it out. Luckily that was also the last class of the day, with plenty of time until dinner. He’d already read the chapters assigned for Herbology and Defense as well, so he should have plenty of time to work on some of his non-magical work.

Not wanting to drag everything out to the common room, and having spent time with the others in the free period before lunch already, he instead settled into his room to work there. It was only as dinner was approaching that he discovered that his vanishing had been seen as ‘odd’, when Gabriel came to fetch him.

“What are you up to in here anyway?” Gabriel asked. “The rest of the firsties were reading their Herbology books in the common room.”

“Er,” Harry said, grabbing the science book he’d been working from. “Non-magical science?”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I’m trying to keep up with my non-magical subjects. I’d already read well past the assigned chapters, so figured I’d get some of this out of the way.”

“Wow. How did you _not_ get put into Ravenclaw with a drive like that? Whatever. Come on, it’s just about dinnertime.”

A few minutes later he was with the rest of the first-years in the common room, being grilled by half the house about what was taught in ‘muggle schools’ after Gabriel had made a comment about that. He ended up promising to bring his non-magical school books out to the common room after dinner so everyone could take a look. Luckily he didn’t have to answer too many more questions before they all left for the Great Hall, beyond Justin asking why he didn’t have his robes on. Apparently he’d not gotten the uniform spiel from the other prefect that morning, and Gabriel gave it again for the benefit of the four boys.

Nothing significant happened throughout dinner itself, outside of gossip being traded, and Harry had to stop himself from leaving as soon as he’d finished ‘dinner’ when he remembered that he’d been told to stay for dessert by Madam Pomfrey. He was starting to wish that he’d brought something to read when murmuring behind him caused him to turn and see that three Slytherin students were approaching. Malfoy and...two others that Harry couldn’t remember the names of.

“Heir Potter,” Malfoy greeted, bowing slightly. Though with a slight scowl that Harry almost missed during the bow. “I am Draco Malfoy, heir of the Malfoy family. My associates are Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, heirs of the Crabbe and Goyle families. I would like to apologize for missing you on the train and assuming that you weren’t attending as a result.”

Harry nodded fractionally, mentally running through what he’d read of wizard customs in the books that Professor Snape had recommended. This was more formal than would normally occur in a school environment of any kind, especially as they were both well under sixteen, and as far as he knew _neither_ of their families actually had the societal ‘rank’ to justify it. Which meant that Malfoy was probably showing off and possibly trying to make Harry look like an idiot.

Some of Dudley’s friends had tried that over the years, and it never went well for them.

“Heir Malfoy,” Harry said after a moment. “I would think that you’d be apologizing for your rude intrusion into the compartment I was in and subsequent dismissal of me without even introducing yourself, not for merely ‘missing’ me on the train.”

The hall had grown silent as this exchange happened, though that comment brought whispering back. Malfoy blinked a couple of times. “I’m sorry, but I’m positive that I didn’t see you on the train.”

“I happened to be with the Patil sisters when you rudely opened the compartment door without knocking. Though at least you apologized and closed the door, which is more than I can say for others that interrupted us.”

The other boy obviously concentrated for a moment before shaking his head. “No, I recall seeing them with a redhead.”

Harry smirked and was about to run his hand over his hair, but paused. Right, silent and/or wandless was apparently a ‘big deal’, and he didn’t want to have to explain that to everyone. Instead he popped his wand out and ran it over his hair while muttering a couple of nonsense words, changing it to the same red that he’d used for the train ride. “Surely you weren’t fooled by a simple color-changing charm?”

Malfoy’s jaw dropped for a moment before he recovered. Harry could see the boy grimace before speaking. “My apologies, Heir Potter. Your...unexpected choice of dress combined with the charm was obviously enough to keep me from identifying you on the train.”

“I accept your apology, Heir Malfoy.”

That brought a smirk to the other boy’s face. “Thank you, Heir Potter. I would also like to offer my assistance in identifying various wizarding families. Some are notably more prestigious than others, and it wouldn’t do for someone of your status to be seen hanging around with the wrong sort.”

Well, wasn’t that an interesting thing to say in the middle of the Great Hall while everyone was paying attention to the conversation. Harry could personally see at least a dozen people scowling at that, even though he wasn’t fully certain what kinds of people the other boy saw as the ‘right’ sort. Probably those that Harry would find to be the _wrong_ sort, given Professor Snape’s warning. But how to put that without being insulting?

After a moment Harry had made a decision there. “My apologies, Heir Malfoy. I am willing to see if we can be friends, but I cannot allow others to dictate my friendships. I feel that I need to judge people for myself, since I know so little about my family and their history, or even the world I find myself in now. It would not be appropriate to accidentally spurn old allies that I am unaware of on the sole word of the son of one who was, willingly or not, in the service of the Dark Lord at the time of my parents’ deaths.”

Malfoy grimaced at that, but bowed again. “I see. I have kept you long enough, Heir Potter. Enjoy your dessert.”

Harry watched the boy turn and leave, the other two following silently.

“You are _so_ lucky that you’re the boy-who-lived,” one of the older Ravenclaws said a moment later. “I don’t think anyone else could’ve said that to him without being _buried_. Possibly literally.”

“What?” Harry asked.

“It’s considered _incredibly_ impolite to mention those that had claimed to be under the Dark Lord’s imperius,” they answered. “Though I have to admit, invoking ignorance before dropping _that_ was a bold move.”

“Especially boldly claiming ignorance before using knowledge like that,” Susan added from a few seats down.

Harry turned to her. “I was _specifically_ warned about Malfoy. Couldn’t tell you any other names at this point.” He then looked back at the Ravenclaw. “By the way, what’s the imperious? I’ve not run into any references to it yet.”

Several Ravenclaws stared at Harry in shock, and a younger boy was the one to answer. “It’s one of the unforgivable and allows the caster to control anyone they cast it on. But how can you _not_ know that?”

“Er, I was just told that Malfoy’s father escaped prison due to claiming mind control or something like that.”

There was a moment of silence before Harry mentally shrugged and turned back to the table, intending to eat some dessert and then head back to the dorms to gather his non-magical school books for everyone to look over. He’d need to make note of where his bookmarks were, since they’d likely not stay in the books while others were flipping through them.

* * *

The next morning Harry was up early and discovered a significant downside to not being in one of the towers. Sure, your sleep wasn’t affected by the weather, but the artificial windows didn’t let you _check_ the weather either. He sighed, then decided to hope for the best and pulled out his normal fall exercise clothing, one of the four light tracksuits he had. Hopefully the magic in the clothing was up to keeping him comfortable in whatever conditions were present outside, though if it was raining hard he’d come back in and do indoor exercises instead and if it was too cold he’d need to get out the heavy tracksuits.

He pulled his hair into a basic ponytail for the time being, then waited in the common room for the few minutes he still had before six. Nobody else joined him, not that he’d expected anyone to, and when he left he saw nobody in the halls. The main doors opened for him automatically when he approached them and he found that there was fog, but no rain. He knew from experience that he wouldn’t be uncomfortable, but also that the fog would drastically reduce visibility. Which meant being careful because he didn’t know the grounds _well_ yet.

Deciding to play it safe until he knew the area better, he only jogged down to the gates and back repeatedly until he felt that he’d exercised enough for the morning. Visibility was a little better when he was done, and he considered the possibility of looping around the quidditch pitch in the future. He walked back up to the main doors, which opened for him again without him needing to even touch them while he was ensuring that any dirt was knocked off his shoes. When he was done he looked up, only to find a man waiting for him. With a cat.

“What were you doing out there this early, girl?” the man asked. “Nobody has quidditch practice yet.”

“I was told that I could go out to exercise anytime after six,” Harry answered. “I’ve been in the habit and didn’t see any reason to stop. Also, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I’ve been told your name?”

The man stared at Harry for a moment, before pulling out a pocket watch and frowning. After a moment he nodded and put the watch away, grumbling something about ‘being fair’. “You’re one of the new crop, aren’t you? I’m Argus Filch, the caretaker. The headmaster never introduces me, just mentions my list at the welcome feast.” He then crouched down to pet the cat. “And this is Mrs. Norris. She’s the one that told me you were up, but we lost track of the time.”

“I’m Harry Potter, hopefully my morning exercise doesn’t cause you too much trouble.” He then crouched down, ignoring the man’s obvious shock, so that he was closer to Mrs. Norris. “And hello to you too.” In response, the cat hissed at him. He frowned, but held his hand out like he had been taught by Mrs. Figg. He waited, being watched carefully by Filch, but Mrs. Norris merely stared at him for a moment before moving back behind the man’s legs. Sighing, Harry stood back up. “It was worth a shot, at least. Mrs. Figg’s cats almost always took months before they’d let me pet them.”

“Mrs. Norris doesn’t trust students,” Filch stated, stepping aside. “Though good on you for not pushing it, probably saved you some scratches. Now then, you should get a move on so that the doors can close.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry entered, and the doors shut behind him. He then paused, and turned to the caretaker. “Excuse me, but I do have one more thing to ask you, if you don’t mind?”

The man frowned, but nodded after a moment. “What is it?”

“Is there anywhere that I could exercise indoors when the weather is unpleasant, or it would otherwise be unsafe to be on the grounds?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“A prefect told me that I’d need to ask you, after telling me when I was allowed out of our common room.”

“Ah.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, before shaking his head. “Sorry. The secondary corridors change too much and everywhere else is out of the question.”

Harry sighed. “Well, at least I tried. Thank you, Mr. Filch.”

The man looked at Harry oddly, frowning. “What house were you in again?”

“Hufflepuff, sir.”

“Ten points to Hufflepuff for checking the rules ahead of time and not making a mess when you came back in.”

“Thank you.”

“Now be off with you.”

Harry didn’t argue, as he did want to take a shower before classes.

* * *

He’d showered, dressed, repacked his bag, and grabbed the Introduction to Arithmancy book he was using as his ‘free reading’ material for the time being before heading out into the common room. Except that he didn’t get a chance to sit down, as Hannah was waiting for him.

“There you are,” she said, stepping up to him. “Where did you go earlier?”

Harry blinked. “Out jogging?”

“Jogging?”

“Exercise to stay healthy.”

“Oh. Are you willing to show us how you do your hair by yourself?”

“I suppose. Are you all going to come out here?”

Hannah grabbed his arm and pulled him across to the door to the girls’ dorms. “No, the others are waiting and told me to get you.”

Harry was being pulled into the room marked with Megan, Sally, and Sally-Anne’s names before he fully realized what was going on. The other four first-year girls were dressed and sitting on the beds, looking over as they entered. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be in here?”

“You’re fine so long as we don’t close the door, and we just want access to our mirrors.”

“Also don’t try to open our doors yourself,” Megan added. “You can knock, but not open them. Girls set off alarms if they open the doors on the boys’ side and boys set off alarms if they open the doors on the girls’ side. You didn’t open the door so you’re good, and the prefects won’t have a problem with you being here so long as the door is left open.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t think the boys are told any of this?”

One of the two Sallys, Harry really had to figure out which was which, shook her head. “They didn’t tell us until we asked about bringing you in here. Normally you apparently learn this stuff when someone sets the alarms off.”

“Oh.”

“Now please show us how you can braid your hair that well without someone else helping.”

Harry ended up demonstrating how he braided his hair in three different ways. The basic braid he normally used, a more complicated one that he felt resulted in a stiffer braid suitable for windier days, and braided pigtails after Hannah asked if he could. The girls were amazed that he’d done it all entirely by feel without even using a mirror but weren’t getting anywhere at all with it themselves when a prefect stuck her head in to remind them of the time. Harry ended up quickly braiding Hannah’s hair for her in pigtails matching what he’d ended with before the six of them left for breakfast.

“Why were you with the girls?” Justin asked as they walked through the halls.

“Braiding lessons,” Harry answered.

“They were teaching you how to braid your hair?”

“He’s teaching _us_ how to braid our hair by feel,” Susan corrected. “Though it’s crazy how quickly he can braid his own hair.”

Harry shrugged. “I got a lot of practice and was horrible at it when I first started.”

“When did you start?” Wayne asked.

“Probably around age six or so? I didn’t really get it down until eight and a half to nine and only got a couple other styles down entirely by feel this past summer.”

“Huh.”

* * *

Harry’s first Charms class had started with Professor Flitwick having them light up their wands, and Harry had forgotten to say ‘lumos’ out loud. He thought Justin sitting next to him might’ve noticed, and the professor definitely had based on the look he was given, but nothing was said about it during class. Professor Flitwick had gone over some other magical theory during the class, assigned a foot-long essay on a single wand movement, and asked Harry to stay back at the end. Luckily the Hufflepuffs had only Charms that morning so nobody had to stay back to wait for him.

“Professor Snape informed me that you’d taught yourself a couple of things,” Professor Flitwick said. “I was hoping that you’d be willing to demonstrate those that aren’t age-restricted for me so that I can try to determine if they’re essentially _existing_ charms or if they’re _new_ ones.”

“I suppose,” Harry said.

“To actually do my detection I will need to cast at you while you are casting, do I have permission to do so?”

“You do, sir.”

The professor brandished his wand. “Very good. Start with whatever you like.”

Harry started with lighting up his finger, causing the diminutive professor to raise an eyebrow before he cast a couple of times. Then he used what he usually thought of as ‘move item around’ to extract his wand from his holster and bring it to his hand, only to then float it around in circles around his hand before returning it to his holster. Finally he ran his hand over his hair to change it to his mother’s red.

“Very impressive Mr. Potter,” the professor said when Harry was done. “The first two are essentially identical to known spells, or combinations thereof, but the last one is quite impressive. I don’t think that I’ve ever run into a spell that changes the color of _all_ of an individual’s hair before. Can you cast that on anything other than hair?”

“I haven’t tried yet,” Harry admitted. “Though I think Gabriel said that I should.”

“I see.” A moment later Professor Flitwick had summoned feathers, parchment, and a piece of chalk. “Would you be willing to try on each of these?”

Harry did so, and initially it didn’t work. But he realized that he was still thinking about _hair_ after the first two attempts. Once he realized that he concentrated on changing the entire feather he was working on and succeeded. Each of the handful of feathers, the sheets of parchment, and the stick of chalk ended up a different color.

“Very good Mr. Potter,” Professor Flitwick said, bouncing slightly. “It’s definitely not one of the normal color changing charms. You should take Arithmancy as an elective in your third year. Figuring out if the spell can be made usable by others would make for a great NEWT project for you. Oh, and thirty-five points to Hufflepuff. Five points for each of your charms being silent, five points for each being wandless, and five for staying after to show me the three.”

“Thank you sir,” Harry replied.

“Now you should be off, I’ve got sixth years to teach in the other classroom I use and need to get over there before they get too restless.”

Harry left the classroom to find all of the Hufflepuffs waiting for him, despite not having needed to. Wayne raised his eyebrow first. “I thought you had black hair.”

“He’s got that color-changing charm going on,” Megan answered. “And if he used it then he was probably asked to demonstrate by Flitwick.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Nothing major, and you didn’t have to wait for me.”

“I think the girls want more braiding lessons,” Justin said. “Personally, I was hoping that you have information that I can write home with for continuing my non-magical education, once we have a clue where the...owlery, I guess, is? I don’t know why Ernie, Roger, and Wayne stuck around.”

Harry looked over at the three boys in question, who looked at each other. Ernie finally shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do?”

“I’m curious about the braiding,” Roger admitted. “Though mainly because my mother has been known to whine about braiding her own hair and I’m starting to wonder what the big deal is.”

“Really?” Wayne asked.

“What? It’ll probably take all of ten minutes watching them to get the general idea.”

“Well, I suppose that it couldn’t _hurt_ to have a basic clue.”

* * *

The four boys ended up reading their Charms book while Harry continued to work with the five girls on braiding by feel until it was nearly lunchtime. They all packed up and headed up to lunch together when it was time to do so. A prefect found them there and took them to Transfiguration afterwards, commenting that it was nice that they had all been together. Harry ended up spending the few minutes before class wondering why the prefects of the other houses _weren’t_ helping their first-years find their classrooms as some of the others arriving were obviously happy to have found the classroom in time _at all_ , but put it out of his mind when the class began.

Unlike Charms, the first Transfiguration lesson was entirely theory with no practical component. An emphasis was placed on proper visualization of your desired end result, but a couple of interesting contrasts were provided as well alongside the secondary emphasis that all transfigurations were _temporary_. Of course, temporary didn’t mean useless, and there were many reasons why you might want to change something for a few minutes, or even _seconds_. She demonstrated that by transfiguring a wooden block just long enough to cause excess material to fall off to reveal a perfectly-formed wooden cat statue with a single spell.

The time between the end of class and dinner was spent by the ten first-years doing their homework, Professor McGonagall having assigned twelve inches on the importance of visualization. Dinner was largely uneventful, but the prefects had decided that they were dragging all of the first-years out for their ‘where everything is’ tour right after dinner. Apparently they wanted to make sure they were all set for Astronomy the following night, where napping after dinner was recommended for the late class.

Harry ended up with Gabriel, along with Justin and Wayne. Many of the things shown made sense to Harry, at least from a ‘why they were shown’ point of view, such as ways to avoid the moving staircases so that you didn’t have to depend on their positions. Two ways to get to the off-limits third floor corridor were shown as well so that they wouldn’t use them. They _should_ have both been locked, but Gabriel had been annoyed to find that someone had unlocked one of them. He couldn’t re-lock it, but made a note to inform a professor that someone had unlocked it.

Getting into the kitchens and seeing the house elves was interesting as well, as were the casting practice rooms. The library was impressive, as were a number of ‘relaxation’ spots that they were shown. Other things made far less sense, such as why they ended up being shown a tapestry showing Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to dance the ballet in an otherwise empty corridor. Beyond that being some kind of tradition, anyway.

Harry did appreciate knowing where the owlery was, even if Hedwig wasn’t around to visit with yet. Justin had been smart enough to have his letter with him to send home and they got to see how to get a school owl to take a letter for you. They also got shown the locations of the other three common rooms, though weren’t told how to get into them. Gabriel claimed that anyone who could answer the riddle for the Ravenclaw common room was permitted to enter and that older students sometimes braved that challenge in order to check the library in there. They were the _only_ house that frequently got visitors as a result, as Hufflepuff guarded the unchangeable access method closely and Gryffindor and Slytherin had passwords that changed frequently.

They ended the tour with a series of secret passages that made absolutely no logical sense, allowing them to go down by climbing up stairs, cross between towers through open air, shift between floors by closing and re-opening the same door that apparently connected to two floors at the same time, and at one point Harry didn’t know if they were in a corridor that was merely designed to _look_ like an upside-down one they’d passed through a minute before or actually walking along the bottom of wooden boards set up in the ceiling of that corridor.

At least it got them back to the common room quickly, where Harry decided to do his occlumency exercises and go to bed.


	6. Year 1 - Chapter 5

Draco frowned as he looked over his list of objectives. It was the end of the second day of classes and he’d failed multiple things. He’d been fooled on the train and hadn’t been able to talk to Potter there, and thus failed to make enough of a positive impression on him to get him into Slytherin. At this point he was perfectly happy with that though, as he didn’t _want_ the crazy boy who wore girls’ clothing in their dorm. Similarly, he wasn’t entirely put out that the offer that his father had instructed him to make had been rebuffed, though he was glad that in the process he hadn’t gotten himself into a position of being a rival or something.

Being constantly at odds with a boy who dressed like Potter did would send _all_ the wrong signals. Worse, it would do nothing for his reputation. Coming out on top of the confrontations would be seen as taking effort on someone who wasn’t worth the effort, and if _Potter_ came out on top it would make Draco look far worse.

Luckily, Potter had shown that he had a brain in a reasonably _safe_ confrontation and the loss of face from being outmaneuvered was minimal. Draco’s grandfather had taught him that there were two kinds of Slytherin, those that were in the house and those that were cunning enough to not be. Potter just _might_ be the latter kind, a true Slytherin hiding their nature so that their enemies would underestimate them. Even dressing like a girl could be part of that, giving everyone something to focus on to distract them from the truth. Being in Hufflepuff meant that people would be more likely to overlook his cunning _and_ intelligence, on top of the ridiculous clothing choices.

Potter obviously bore watching, from a distance for now, but Draco wasn’t sure if he could convince his father of that. His frown deepened as he picked up his quill, pondering how to word things to present his arguments correctly. _Without_ giving away how unnerving he felt Potter’s choice of clothing was.

* * *

Harry started his morning bright and early. There was less fog, so he was comfortable enough with jogging around the quidditch pitch a couple of times as part of his morning exercise. Upon returning he found that Mr. Filch was once again waiting, though off to the side in the Entrance Hall with a broom instead of at the door. He gave Harry five points for not making a mess coming back in, warned that rain was coming in the next couple of days, and then headed down the corridor.

Unlike the previous day, Harry did get to sit down with the Introduction to Arithmancy book and read some more of it after he’d showered and gotten ready for the day. The first-year girls found him in the common room and convinced him to go to breakfast with them instead of waiting for the boys, the group taking a longer route through a couple of secret passages just to ensure that they’d correctly remembered where they were.

They made it to breakfast and had started eating before owls started to come into the Great Hall, Hedwig among them with a response from Aunt Petunia. Harry took the letter from Hedwig and read it while alternating between his own breakfast and giving Hedwig bacon. She’d thanked him for writing so soon and told him to not overwork ‘poor Hedwig’ with flying back and forth (which Hedwig seemed to scoff at as Harry read it). There was a note that Dudley was ‘settling in’ fine at Smeltings, another that she thought the garden snakes missed him as she’d seen one and convinced Uncle Vernon to leave it alone, and she lamented that Aunt Marge was already pushing for them to have Harry not come home at Christmas so that she could visit with one of her dogs and see Dudley.

Uncle Vernon had added to the end of the letter to state that Harry was _not_ to stay at school over the holidays just because his sister wanted to visit. She could either deal with the fact that Harry could be around or not show up at all. At the same time, Harry wasn’t to go home instead of staying at school or going to see how any new friends celebrated the holiday just to annoy Aunt Marge.

A moment later Harry found himself interrupted by a second owl, though it came from further down the table. Hedwig eyed the newcomer, but backed off slightly.

“That’s my aunt’s owl,” Susan called from where she was sitting, waving a letter. “She obviously sent both of us letters.”

“Ah,” Harry said, taking the envelope with his name on it from the owl’s leg. “Thank you. Would you like some bacon?”

The owl ignored him and just took off. Harry shrugged and opened the new letter. He found that it was largely a request for information on his visit to the Ministry, meaning that Susan likely hadn’t gotten a letter to her aunt before this one was written. It also congratulated him for joining Hufflepuff and recommended asking Susan to include his response with her next owl home. Harry idly wondered how Madam Bones knew he and Susan were in Hufflepuff if they hadn’t made it to the owlery until last night, but decided that perhaps some of the teachers or older students had sent messages out.

Writing a letter could easily wait until after morning classes were done with, though they had History first thing so perhaps he’d write Madam Bones then.

* * *

Harry stretched as he left the boy’s lavatory, having had to clean up after Herbology. They’d been shown various dirts and fertilizers, including running their bare hands through most of them to ‘get a feel for them’. But the greenhouses didn’t really have a good washing station, so visiting the lavatory to wash up had been needed before lunch. Actually, he might want to take a shower after lunch, if only because his hair had gotten filthy. Perhaps he needed to consider buns during Herbology, like he was planning on for Potions?

Deciding that could wait for later, he headed into the Great Hall and sat down. He’d written his letter to Madam Bones and passed it off to Susan, hopefully Hedwig wouldn’t have a problem with that. Perhaps he should write another letter to Aunt Petunia? But she might think that he was overworking Hedwig with constant flights back and forth, no matter what Hedwig thought of it.

Having a pet that _wanted_ to handle his mail had become mildly annoying as soon as he had mail to be handled. Maybe he needed to find someone else to write to?

Harry was just starting to eat when Padma approached him. Or at least he _hoped_ it was Padma, because if it was Parvati then the Patils had decided to swap uniforms to confuse people. “Hello Harry.”

“Hi Padma,” Harry replied. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, how about you?”

“I’m okay. Are you sure you’re fine? You look a little distracted.”

“I...might be locked out of the tower until someone can figure out today’s riddle or Professor Flitwick takes pity on us. Other than that I’m fine, and a couple of seventh-years are trying to figure out the answer for the rest of us.”

“Huh. Are you permitted to tell me the riddle?”

Padma focused for a moment. “I believe it’s ‘What can travel the world while staying in its corner?’ today.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” one of the other Ravenclaws said. “Though I know a couple of others got it, we just haven’t been able to get the answer from them yet.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Harry admitted. “It’s a stamp.”

“A stamp?” Padma asked.

“Muggles put stamps on the corners of envelopes to show that they paid for them to be delivered. So a letter could travel around the world but the stamp wouldn’t leave the corner of the envelope.”

“Oh.”

“Thank you Potter,” the other Ravenclaw said, getting up. “I need to go grab something from my dorm.”

Harry watched them go, along with a dozen others, then shook his head. “Right, did you need something Padma?”

“What?” she said, then shook her head. “Right, sorry. All first-years have the afternoon off due to the evening Astronomy class, so I know you’re free. Care to join Parvati and I in the library to work on our assignments?”

“Sure, why not. I’ll meet you there after I take a quick shower.”

Padma’s eyebrow raised. “Why do you need to take a shower?”

“My hair is a mess after Herbology. It’s long enough to hit the tables in the greenhouses.”

“Oooh. Yeah, Parvati would have a fit if you left your hair like that, we’ll wait for you.”

* * *

Somehow the library gathering grew from ‘Harry and the Patil sisters’ to ‘Harry, Parvati, Lavender Brown, and all the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first-year girls’ while Harry was in the shower. He wasn’t sure if he should be weirded out about apparently being ‘one of the girls’ in this case, but Lisa assured him that the other first-year boys from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had been invited but had declined. Parvati and Lavender had admitted that they’d not thought to ask the other Gryffindors to join them at that point, though he did see Miss Granger come in and ignore them to sit at another table.

The group reasonably quietly worked on their homework, Lavender and Parvati being the only two that hadn’t touched the Charms or Transfiguration assignments. Padma was keeping on Parvati to finish her homework _before_ talking about who knew what else and Lavender was going along with it both because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents with poor grades and because she was already disgusted with Weasley’s work ethic. By unspoken consensus the rest of them hadn’t asked for details.

Harry was one of the first done with his work, though mostly because he’d somehow escaped being questioned by the two Gryffindor girls. That didn’t mean he was done in the library, though, and he headed up to the librarian’s desk with the scrap of parchment from the train.

“Good afternoon Miss,” the librarian, Madam Pince according to the sign on the desk, greeted. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for information on a haircare potion,” Harry explained, looking down at the scrap of parchment. “Sleekeazy’s?”

“I assure you that you won’t be able to find out how to brew it here.”

“No, someone said that it was invented by a Potter and I wanted to see if it was one of my family members or not.”

“One of your...” the woman started, then stared at him for a moment before her eyes softened. “Ah, yes, _Mister_ Potter, sorry for not recognizing you. Yes, Fleamont was your grandfather, though he and Euphemia died before you were born. I believe we have a couple of books that discuss them and other members of your family, come along and we’ll see if they’re on the shelves.”

Harry followed along and paid attention as Madam Pince explained a little of the filing system and why they were going to each shelf. Four different books were collected from various points in the library, and she pointed out a smaller table with two chairs that she said his parents used to sit at when studying together. They then returned to the desk and the four books were checked out to him so that he’d have plenty of time to read through them.

When he returned to the other first-years he got questioning looks, but no actual questions, from Morag and Sue. No, wait, _Isobel_ and Sue, the Ravenclaw preferred her middle name. Regardless, three of the four books were carefully placed in his bag before he opened the last one to start reading there. The others left him to that until Lavender and Parvati were both done with their work, at which point Parvati insisted that they go somewhere else where they could be ‘louder’.

Harry should’ve thought about that before he agreed, admittedly, but he’d been distracted by learning about his family. Before he knew it the entire group had migrated to a nearby unused classroom and Parvati was asking him about how he braided his hair, citing comments made by the Hufflepuff girls before he’d shown up. He was starting to wonder how he became the first-year braiding instructor, but at least nobody here was calling him weird for having the skill in the first place.

* * *

Five Ravenclaws and two Gryffindors at the Hufflepuff table at dinner was the first time the first-years hadn’t stuck entirely to their own house tables, and was probably the largest single gathering of students sitting at another house table so far that year. Two Hufflepuff prefects had stopped by the group to tell them that they should head back to their dorms ‘for a nap’ after dinner so that they’d be properly awake for Astronomy, and three Ravenclaw prefects had done the same. Two of those had also thanked Harry for explaining the day’s riddle ‘when our own muggle-raised thought it was too obvious to mention’.

Harry had, with difficulty, resisted the lure of the books talking about his family and napped after dinner. He’d only slept for a few hours before he’d woken, determined that he still had plenty of time before Astronomy, and started reading the books from the library again. Which was how he was found when the prefects were making sure the first-years were all up in time to get ready to head to the Astronomy tower.

The first class was entirely practical, learning the basics of how to set up and use their telescopes. On that end Harry was actually slightly disadvantaged as he had the only nonstandard telescope in the group, though he was assured by Professor Sinestra that he wouldn’t have any problems with using his telescope for lessons. She also brooked no nonsense during class, taking points off for anyone doing anything that wasn’t related to the class itself.

* * *

Despite the late night, Harry still got up in time to go exercise at six. He’d done multiple laps around the quidditch pitch and was on his way back to the castle when it started to rain, though he made it inside before it started to pour. He pitied anyone with classes outside today.

“Potter!” Mr. Filch yelled a moment after the doors closed behind Harry. “What are you doing up this early? Didn’t the first-years have Astronomy last night?”

“I napped after dinner,” Harry replied. “The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw prefects recommended it.”

“Really? Five points to each of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw for their prefects passing on good judgement to their first-years, then. And another five points to Hufflepuff for you not making a mess of the place despite the rain I hear out there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“No problem, Potter. Breakfast still isn’t for a bit, so you should go clean up.”

Harry nodded and headed off to do so.

* * *

For most of the morning after breakfast you could find Harry sitting in the common room reading the books he’d gotten from Madam Pince. He’d have done so in his room, but didn’t want to be accused of hiding himself away or something like that. The other Hufflepuffs mostly ignored him, beyond a couple mild instances of being asked what he was reading. None of the books covered the Potters exclusively, and he ended up skimming the sections that talked about other families.

Reading the portions that did cover his family were very enlightening though, and made him wonder how ill-informed the Wizarding World was in some respects. For example, he was almost positive that Sleekeazy’s was nothing more than muggle petroleum jelly with a couple of simple magical ingredients mixed in to change the consistency or smell slightly. The descriptions of how it looked and felt seemed to match his own experiences with petroleum jelly well enough, at least.

The one other thing he noticed was that there was no real _pattern_ to what Potters did, beyond ‘whatever they feel like’ anyway. There was no real family business to go into as every Potter did their own thing. _Sometimes_ a Potter would follow in the footsteps of their parents, but it didn’t seem to last more than two generations before the endeavor was discarded in favor of something else. Which meant that the Potter family had contributed to every magical field in some way at some point, generally doing so again every few generations, and had even contributed to a few non-magical fields. Yet they’d never stayed a prominent name in any one field, the family moving on to other fields and ideas within a couple of generations.

He’d finished reading all the information the books had on the Potter family by lunchtime. Creating Sleekeazy’s was the last known business venture of any Potter in the British Isles, as his parents had apparently gone straight into opposing the Dark Lord after graduation. His father’s unofficial occupation was even listed as ‘supporting the auror corps’ in one book, due entirely to how much money he funneled their way for protective equipment and training purposes.

The end result was that he could do pretty much anything short of supporting the Dark Lord and pureblood supremacy and not feel like he was disrespecting his family, and even ‘going dark’ was in his family history a couple of times. Doing so himself would feel like more of a disrespect to his parents than his family in general and didn’t really appeal to him right now anyway.

He headed to lunch after putting the library books safely away, wondering if he should return them today or keep them a little longer to look up some of the families he was related to.

“Filch is a horror,” one of the older Hufflepuff boys whined as they sat across from Harry. “Kept me for ten minutes and threatened to bring me to Sprout.”

“He seems nice enough to me,” Harry commented.

“Not this again,” a girl a few seats down said. “First you claimed that _Snape_ is nice, and now _Filch?_ Didn’t we already send you to the hospital wing to be checked out?”

“He’s given me...twenty points, I think? And both us and Ravenclaw another five each for prefects passing on good advice.”

There was dead silence from the older students that heard that for a moment, before the girl a few seats down broke out in laughter. “That’s a good one, Potter. Almost had me believing it.”

Most of the older students started to chuckle as well, at least until Caroline gasped from nearby. She then waved a small book she’d produced. “Potter’s right, Filch has given him twenty points, and ‘unspecified house prefects’ five. Bones and Macmillan have gotten five points each from him too, but the prefect summary doesn’t tell me for what. We’ve got a total of thirty-five points from him so far.”

“Is Filch the old man with the cat?” Susan asked.

“Yes.”

“He gave Ernie and I five points each for catching Hannah before she was hurt when she stepped on one of the trick steps.”

Harry thought that several of the older students were in danger of going into shock at that. “Why is this such a big deal?”

The boy across from Harry turned to stare at him. “Because Filch _hates_ students. I didn’t even know he could _give_ points! Wait, does that mean he can _take_ points too?”

“The caretaker has always been able to give and take points,” Professor Sprout said from behind Harry, startling him somewhat as he’d not seen her coming up to them. “Though his ability to do so is more limited than the professors and the Headmaster, he’s used his ability nearly every year he’s worked here. I do believe that he’s only affected the house cup standing once though.”

“Limited how?” Caroline asked.

“His overall given points balance isn’t allowed to be negative, primarily. Of course, he refuses to give ‘troublemakers’ points, no matter their actions. Sixteen years ago he managed to give out a hundred and eighty points in a single year, only to take the full hundred and eighty points off of Gryffindor for one of James Potter and Sirius Black’s end of year pranks to lose Gryffindor the house cup.”

“Caroline says he’s pulled off at least thirty-five points so far this _week_ ,” the boy across from Harry noted.

“He’s been unusually generous so far this year, Mr. Cook. Do keep this from the Weasley twins? That said, Miss Teel, I’d like to talk to you about the incident you witnessed this morning. Please stop by my office after lunch.”

“Yes ma’am,” Caroline replied.

* * *

Transfiguration and Charms after lunch had been theory-heavy, but with only six inches of homework each and several more days to accomplish them than the previous assignments. They’d not been doubles, and had followed immediately after one another, so there was plenty of time to sit down and do their homework before dinner. Given that it was still pouring rain out there wasn’t much reason not to get it out of the way either, if only in hopes of the weather being better over the weekend.

After that Harry was given a lesson in how to play Exploding Snap. Or, more accurately, how to play with the cards in general, as they were treated like a non-magical would treat a normal deck of playing cards. They weren’t suitable for most games that you’d use normal playing cards for though, due to the _exploding_ part of things. Personally, he thought that there had to be a trick, even if the others didn’t know what said trick was yet.

They stopped playing shortly before dinner, to Harry’s relief as he thought the explosions were going to start leaving burns on his fingers. With any luck Wizard’s Chess involved less potential personal injury, since all the muggle-raised had been promised a lesson in it as well. Dinner itself was uneventful, and Harry had taken his non-magical work out afterwards. He’d gotten some minor teasing about being a secret Ravenclaw, but nothing significant.

* * *

Friday morning saw Harry reaching the Entrance Hall before turning back around to head back down to the common room. It was still pouring out and he didn’t fancy jogging in the rain. Instead he did his indoor workout before showering, then spent much longer on his hair than he had been spending up to this point. When he was done the majority of his hair was securely in a bun, though one that he could release trivially when he was ready to, with his bangs also braided out of the way. It revealed his scar more prominently than he preferred, but it wasn’t like everyone didn’t know it was there anyway.

Sadly, he’d rarely gone through the process of doing his hair up this way, only having come up with it originally for when he’d be spending significant time cooking. As that only happened a couple of times a month at most he wasn’t nearly as quick with it, meaning that it took him far longer than usual to get right. By the time he was done, including having to start over twice due to getting early steps wrong, it was nearly time for breakfast. Which meant that he hadn’t had time to read any more from either the Introduction to Arithmancy book or the borrowed library books.

He was obviously going to have to get some more practice in, though using most of this style for Herbology days as well as Potions days would help there.

Heading out into the common room, somewhat amazed that he couldn’t feel the cauldron in his bag, he joined the other first-years.

“What’s with your hair today?” Hannah asked.

“We have Potions today,” Harry answered.

A couple of the older students nearby joined the other first-years in giving Harry odd looks, not that he knew _why_ they were doing so. Surely they’d all read the list of safety rules at the beginning of the assigned book, and the older students had no excuse at all. Well, perhaps those with short hair, but surely their longer-haired classmates had provided an example often enough?

To Harry’s surprise, at breakfast he received two letters. Neither was brought to him by Hedwig, the first being delivered by a school owl and the second coming from the same owl that Madam Bones had used the previous time. It had also, once again, stopped at Susan first, but she’d sat next to him today so it hadn’t had as far to go. He opened the one from Madam Bones first, to find it thanking him for his answers and assuring him that the security guards would be far more professional when dealing with groups in the future. The other letter turned out to be an invitation to visit Hagrid at his hut that afternoon after the rain had broken, alone or with “a couple o' friends”.

Given the exterior size of the hut in question, assuming he was right about which one it was, taking more than maybe three of the other first-years with him was _probably_ too many people. He’d have to think about that, maybe ask if anyone wanted to join him at lunch with the caveat that they couldn’t all go?

He sent a response with the school owl, wondering where Hedwig was, and then sighed. He wasn’t looking forward to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Sure, it would probably be far more interesting without the stuttering teacher, garlic, and pain in his scar. But he had to deal with all of those and it was high on his list of worst classes he had because of it.

* * *

Harry was happy that there’d been over an hour between DADA and Potions as it had given his scar plenty of time to stop aching and his nose enough time to recover from the garlic assault. It hadn’t been quite enough time to finish the assignment that Professor Quirrell had given them, but Harry had swung by an outside window to see that the rain did seem to be letting up. Apparently Hagrid had checked the forecast before sending that owl this morning. Even better, the forecast he’d checked had been correct.

Looking into magical weather forecasts might not be a bad idea, especially if they could actually manage to be accurate half a day out. That might even be enough to get Uncle Vernon to stop being skittish around magic.

The Hufflepuff students had arrived just after the Ravenclaw students and they were all waiting for Professor Snape to open the classroom door. He had to work between classes to clean up any mess left behind from the previous class, and there were three other classrooms used for when things would need to sit undisturbed between classes. They probably wouldn’t use any of those for a couple of years though, at least according to Gabriel.

“Hey Harry,” Mandy from Ravenclaw said. “I heard that you did your hair up special for Potions today.”

“Yeah,” Harry answered. “Though I’m not sure why the rest of you haven’t bothered.”

“Why would we bother?”

The door opening interrupted the conversation, Professor Snape standing there. He looked over the group, then stepped back from the door. “Come in and find a workstation. Two to a table, nobody works at a table alone, but I don’t normally assign workstations or partners. Potter, I’d like you to be up front for today.”

Everyone filed into the classroom and Harry ended up partnered with Padma. The other front table had two other Ravenclaws. There was a general lack of splitting along house lines throughout the room. Harry and Padma placed their equipment on the table, and he swapped his glasses for the goggle-style ones and pulled on a hair net as well. Padma gave him an odd look for doing so, but said nothing.

Professor Snape then gave a speech about potions, mentioned that they would generally _not_ be using their wands in class, and only then took role. He didn’t seem to mark the parchment he’d been reading off of, merely putting it aside, before he looked over the class.

“A show of hands,” the professor said. “Who has read the first two chapters of their textbook?”

Harry raised his hand, as did Padma, but he couldn’t see if anyone else behind him had.

“All of you,” the professor continued. “Very well. Potter, please come up here.”

It only took a moment to step around the desk and move to the point that Professor Snape pointed at. The professor then gestured at Harry. “Now then. As you should all know, yet apparently _don’t_ , by tradition most safety measures in potions are left to the brewer and are not otherwise taught or required. Mr. Potter is one of only _six_ current students in the school to have taken that to heart. He has protected his eyes with goggles and his hair is tied up securely to prevent it from getting into potions or flame sources. I suspect that his hair net is a potioneer’s hair net and charmed to keep fumes out of his hair to further protect it, instead of using my preferred method of a hair potion that protects my hair more completely. Mr. Potter, have you done anything else to prepare?”

“Er,” Harry said. “I have a full face shield with a clean air enchantment and protective apron in my bag for when expecting to work on more volatile potions. You could also say that the first aid kit in my bag counts as preparing, but I don’t think it would be suitable for most brewing injuries outside of mild burns or cuts during preparation.”

“And why have you brought the protective items and prepared as you did?”

“Because the safety overview before the first chapter of the assigned text recommended all of it for any brewer of any skill level.”

“Very good, Mr. Potter. I hereby award Hufflepuff five points for each of securing your hair, protecting it with a hair net, protecting your eyes with goggles, having additional protective wear available if needed, and having a first aid kit of any kind with you. Provided instructions are followed to any reasonable degree you should not need the face shield or protective apron today, and you may now return to your table.”

Harry moved back next to Padma, and the professor looked over the class. “If you wish to order any of the things that Mr. Potter already has then let me know. I can provide owl-order sheets for safety equipment, but cannot provide instruction in securing your hair as Mr. Potter has.” He produced his wand and waved it at the blackboard, causing writing to appear. “Let’s see how well you can follow other instructions. On the board are the steps for a boil-cure potion, also found in your books. Any ingredients you don’t have in your personal kits, or for those without personal kits, can be found in the cabinet on the ‘first-year’ shelf. Water is available at the sinks.”

It only took a moment for Harry to determine that he had everything but the water needed in his kit, so he went straight for the sinks while most of the class headed for the cabinet. He’d come to the conclusion that making potions was a lot like cooking, partially a science and partially an art. Since he usually enjoyed cooking he thought that he might enjoy making potions as well. He checked his book and found that it had the same instructions as the board, but emphasised removing the potion from heat before adding the porcupine quills.

By the end of class they all had potions that were deemed acceptable by the professor. He assigned eighteen inches on safety, excluded Harry as ‘not needing it’, and then dismissed them while asking Harry to stay behind for a moment. Most of the class took copies of the offered order forms as well before they left.

“Mr. Potter,” the professor said once they were alone in the room. “Have you been keeping up with your occlumency exercises?”

“Yes sir,” Harry answered. “Though I don’t know how well they’re actually working.”

“Very good. Sadly, I can’t begin your proper instruction as I’m not a certified instructor in the art for children. Perhaps once you’ve turned fifteen, but until then my oaths as a teacher prevent me from intruding upon a student’s mind outside of emergencies for fear of causing damage to a developing mind. I’ve put out feelers for someone who can help you, but have nothing yet.”

“Thank you for trying, at least.”

“You’re welcome. Now then, I also know that you had class with Quirrell earlier. I find myself curious if your scar reacted?”

Harry nodded. “Yes sir, every time he turns his back on me and occasionally when he doesn’t. I’ve noted it for Madam Pomfrey.”

“Curious. With any luck she’ll figure things out soon, at least. Enjoy the rest of your day, and don’t be afraid to seek me out if you need anything.”

“Thank you, sir.”


	7. Year 1 - Chapter 6

Ron looked over at the group of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first-years entering the Great Hall for lunch. He could see Harry in the group, and wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Harry was _supposed_ to be Ron’s best mate and key to getting out from under his brothers. None of them would be best friends with the boy-who-lived, and eventually Harry would’ve married Ginny and become a proper Weasley thanks to his friendship with Ron. At least according to the various plans Ginny herself had been making over the past few years. Except none of that was happening.

Instead, Harry was a weirdo who looked and dressed like a _girl_ , had gone into _Hufflepuff_ instead of Gryffindor, and worst of all appeared to like to study. In a way it was a good thing that Ron had missed the boy on the train, likely mistaking him for a girl, because if the plan to ensure that the boy-who-lived ended up in Gryffindor had worked then they’d be sharing a dorm. And Ron wanted _nothing_ to do with sharing a dorm with a bloke that dressed in girls’ clothing.

Sadly, over the past few days Ron had also come to realize that without Harry’s fame he was going to have to actually _work_ at something. Not being the best mate of the boy-who-lived had scuppered all of his plans for how his life would go, and now he had to pick up the pieces and make something of them. What that something was he didn’t know, because he’d never considered that he might need to do anything else. It was like he was playing chess against the world, except he only had pawns and was going to need to find a way to win despite that.

How to do that without needing to become Percy was another problem entirely.

* * *

Harry had dropped his bag off in his dorm room and let his hair out of the bun. His hair was still braided more than he preferred, but he didn’t want to spend the time redoing it at this point. After all, he was hungry and it was lunchtime.

The delay from the Hufflepuffs waiting for Harry had meant that the Ravenclaws had made it back down the Great Hall from their tower at around the same time that the Hufflepuffs had made it there. As a result they’d entered lunch largely together. Harry and the girls had also ended up sitting together at the Ravenclaw table together, the Puffs being invited to join the Ravens in a combination of ‘fairness’ and ‘wanting to grill Harry’. It was at least nice that they’d admitted to the latter outright, even if that had scared off the other boys. Though it was nice that the Puffs had invited the Ravens to join them at the Hufflepuff table in the process.

“I still can’t believe that you got a free pass from Professor Snape,” Padma said as they filled their plates.

“It really isn’t fair,” Megan agreed. “You are going to have to teach us how to do our hair up like you did too, you know, and I’d never heard of hair nets that keep potion fumes out of your hair before.”

“They’re listed in the first chapter of the textbook,” Harry said. “Admittedly, I don’t think they’re described, just named, but they’re there.”

“What are you talking about?” one of the Slytherins asked.

Padma turned and looked behind them, though Harry didn’t. “Professor Snape used Harry as an example of proper safety when brewing, gave him twenty-five points, and excused him from the homework assignment on safety.”

“Is _that_ why he had that odd hairstyle this morning?”

“Apparently,” Megan answered. “He’s going to have to teach us that one too, and probably help us with it for future classes until we have it down.”

“Really? Is that open to any house, or is this a Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw alliance of some kind?”

Harry sighed and turned around to see a blond-haired girl. “There are already a couple of Gryffindor girls included, so it would be especially rude to deny you. But you’d have to play nice with everyone.”

“I think I can handle that, as could one of the other Slytherin girls. I’m Tracey Davis, but you can call me Tracey if you’re helping me out. When and where would we meet?”

Looking around at the other girls, Harry sighed. “Probably best to get things taken care of this weekend. Tomorrow morning after breakfast, meet at the library before we find an unused classroom?”

All eleven girls nodded, though Tracey frowned a moment later. “You were talking about hair nets too?”

“And goggles,” Susan added. “Protective aprons, face shields, first aid kits. I think that’s all that came up? Surely Professor Snape mentioned all of this in your class before ours and offered you owl-order forms?”

“He didn’t describe safety measures at all and Longbottom melted a cauldron. We’ve got a full two feet to write on safety thanks to that.”

“I wonder if he only mentioned things in our class because we were questioning Harry about his hair just before it,” Lisa wondered.

“Maybe,” Padma said, standing up. “I’m going to go make sure Parvati knows the plan. I don’t know if she’ll invite any more Gryffindors or if it’ll end up being her and Lavender again. I’ll be back shortly either way.”

* * *

Harry had ended up removing some of the extra braids before wandering down to visit Hagrid alone, as the rest of the girls had opted to go work on the homework assignment that he didn’t have to do. He might’ve been able to convince a couple of the boys to join him, but hadn’t felt like interrupting their somewhat vocal discussion about sports. Especially since he hadn’t recognized most of the terms they’d been using. Keeping up with sports discussions was hard enough when you _knew_ the terms.

Nobody else was around the groundskeeper’s hut when Harry reached it, though he did note a crossbow and a very large pair of galoshes sitting outside of the door. He knocked on the door and heard frantic scrabbling from inside, booming barks that made him back up a little, and Hagrid’s voice talking to the likely-dog. Fang, apparently. A moment later the door opened a crack, to show Hagrid’s face. “Ah, hello there Harry. Hold on.”

The door opened to let Harry in a moment later, Hagrid holding an enormous black boarhound back. Hams and pheasants hung from the ceiling of the single room while a copper kettle was boiling on the fire. A massive bed sat in the corner, and as soon as the door was closed the boarhound was let loose. It jumped up and licked Harry’s face, obviously having more ‘bark than bite’.

“Don't worry about Fang, he's a softie,” Hagrid said, likely noticing the slightly-worried look that had to be showing on Harry’s face. Ripper had been enough to make him wary of large dogs in general. “Though ey wouldn't mind introducin ‘im to Filch's cat. Always followin me around when ey go up to the castle despite Filch knowin ey'm allergic.”

“Mrs. Norris seems nice enough to me,” Harry said.

The man actually looked at Harry in surprise, before moving to pour water into a teapot. “Really now? Most students hate ‘er and Filch.”

“They both seem fine to me, though Professor Sprout did say that he dislikes ‘troublemakers’.”

“Ye must be a good lad if Filch trusts ye. But he sets his blasted cat on me every time ey go up to the castle.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Don’ know, he just does. Now then, have a rock cake an' tell me abou' yer classes.”

Harry avoided trying to eat much of the rock-hard ‘cakes’ while he talked about his classes, and in exchange Hagrid told him some stories about his parents. Most of those were Hagrid finding his father causing trouble. Dinnertime came before they knew it, and Hagrid shooed Harry off to the castle as soon as they realized what time it was. Harry had avoided taking any rock cakes with him by mentioning that he still had far too many sweets from the train, which was entirely accurate and he should really do something about that.

* * *

Come morning on Saturday, Harry was surprised when several others spilled out of the dorms bright and early while he was waiting for six. They were admittedly equally surprised to see him, though he thought that they might be the house quidditch team based on the brooms they were carrying.

“Potter, right?” one of the girls asked.

“Yep,” Harry answered.

“What are you doing up this early on a Saturday? And what in the world are you wearing?”

“I get up early to exercise every day, and this is what I currently like to exercise in.”

One of the boys looked him over. “What do you do?”

Harry shrugged. “Mostly jog right now. Even if I’d brought my bicycle there’s nowhere to ride it. I’ll come up with a more complete routine once I’ve better explored the grounds. Going up the hill multiple times is a good workout on its own, but I’d like to see if I can find stairs outside where Mr. Filch won’t mind me going up at much faster than a walk as well.”

The older students looked at each other, and one of the other boys nodded before turning back to Harry. “The quidditch pitch has stairs going up to the stands, and those are pretty high up. Do you think those would work?”

“That sounds great, but would I be allowed to use them?”

“So long as you don’t do so while the other houses are practicing then you should be good.”

Harry frowned at that. “Why would I need to worry about which house is practicing?”

“Because we’ll be accused of having you spy on them if you’re there while they are,” one of the others answered. “If you want to check out the pitch then we should get moving, Diggory and Pryce here need to try out and we only have the pitch first thing today.”

* * *

Harry had definitely overdone his exercise that morning, and he was feeling it as he knocked any dirt off of his shoes before entering the castle. One of the chasers, Heidi, had shown him around the pitch and stands. She claimed that she had no head for team management and would let the others handle that, followed by explaining that Diggory and Pryce were trying out for the open seeker position so they didn’t need the chasers for anything other than observers anyway.

The four sets of locker rooms at the bottom of the oval stands were the first thing that he was shown, after seeing the floor of the pitch itself briefly. He was warned to stay out of those for the other houses before they headed up one of the sets of stairs to the stands. Those were at least five stories up by Harry’s reckoning, possibly more. From the stands he got to see the beginnings of testing the two boys trying out, though it didn’t interest him much.

Heidi had left him to his own devices after that, and he’d done a couple of loops around the stands that included going up and down stairs. That had been followed by jogging most of the way back to the castle instead of walking, leading to his legs burning more than they probably should. He was regretting the fact that he only had a shower in the dorms as a good soak would feel nice this morning.

“Five points to Hufflepuff for not making a mess,” Mr. Filch called as Harry entered the castle.

“Thank you, sir,” Harry replied, then paused. “Excuse me, but may I ask you a question?”

Mr. Filch looked at him, then nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Do you have Mrs. Norris follow Hagrid around when he comes up to the castle?”

The man blinked, then snorted. “No, that’s almost certainly due to the contents of the oaf’s pockets. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him empty them to find something without there being at least one rat to be available as a treat for the animals he frequently takes care of.”

“Ah. I’ll try to remember to let him know.”

“I don’t see why it matters. If anything it’s a hassle to me, keeping Mrs. Norris from looking for troublemakers.”

“He’s allergic to cat hair.”

Mr. Filch looked surprised at that. “Really? He’s never complained about taking a look at Mrs. Norris when a student has injured her.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know about that, beyond perhaps being more concerned about her health than his in those cases. I’ll try to remember to let him know about the contents of his pockets though.”

“I see. Five more points to Hufflepuff for being a good friend.”

“Thank you, sir.”

* * *

Harry was still ready before breakfast started, despite taking a longer shower than usual. He’d opted for a purple dress today, not needing to worry about classes, before ensuring that he had most of his small supply of hair care items in his handbag. His hair was currently in a very basic and loose braid, just enough to keep it reasonably under control since he expected to be doing it up in multiple styles after breakfast anyway. Feeling ready enough for the day, he headed up to breakfast on his own, wincing slightly due to the pain in his legs as he climbed some of the stairs.

Being one of the first to breakfast, he was easily able to claim a seat at the end of the Hufflepuff table instead of needing to head further into the hall. He filled his plate and started eating, but started to regret his somewhat prominent seat as others filtered in and invariably stared at him for a couple of moments before moving on. Most of them were wearing their school uniforms, or at least their robes, so perhaps it was only because he wasn’t?

He was just finishing up his breakfast when Hedwig flew in with a package, surprising him. Though it probably helped to explain why a school owl had been used by Hagrid the day before. Harry carefully removed the package and note before grabbing some bacon for Hedwig, then decided to open the note first. That didn’t really help his confusion, as it seemed to be an invoice with no names, just numbers. Though the scrawled ‘refund included for use of personal owl’ note at the end implied that Hedwig hadn’t been expected.

Putting the note aside, he pulled open the package. Sitting right on top, before he’d even finished removing the outer wrapping, were two sickles. Presumably those were the mentioned refund. He took a moment to slip those into his purse, glad that he’d still had it in his handbag, before opening up the rest of the package. Inside were four individually wrapped items and another note. He picked the latter up and opened it, hoping for answers.

**Mr. Potter,**

**I heard that you sat with my daughters on the express and are hoping to remain friends across house boundaries. Padma assured me that you are intelligent and were working with muggle maths when they found you. Her comments on that caused my husband to find and purchase some muggle maths books. We are very impressed with what they have been able to do and feel that some of what they’ve learned could be revolutionary in the magical world as well.**

**Parvati instead assured me that you were beautiful and declared her desire to get you to wear magical makeup. It is understandable why you don’t, yet at the same time it could be very useful to you. She asked that we send a full kit in what she has decided are your colors, something that I have not done. I apologize in advance for her likely reaction to finding that out.**

**Instead, as thanks for the information you provided through Padma and for befriending my daughters I have ordered a smaller selection of items for you. They are intended to help you conceal your identity, similar to what you did on the express. I do not know if they will be useful to you at school and would have waited until the holidays to send them, but practice using makeup is best done when you have access to those you can ask for assistance. I’m sure Parvati would be delighted to help, even in such a limited capacity.**

**In this package you should find a large magical concealer kit, a travel version thereof, a beginner’s instruction manual for them, and a set of magical contact lenses with instructions on their use. Combined with whatever magic you used to change the color of your hair on the train it should hopefully be enough to render you nearly unrecognizable to those who wish to seek you out.**

**Priya Patil**

Blinking, Harry re-read the note twice before folding it and setting it aside. He then opened each of the four packages, finding them to be exactly as described. Most curious about the contacts, he opened the included pamphlet that had been wrapped around the case to read through it. They were apparently intended to be worn for up to four days at a time, without even needing to be removed overnight, but with two days being recommended due to the magical stress that they’d place on his eyes. He should also wait two to three days for every day he wore them before wearing them again.

In addition to being corrective, they were also charmed to change his eye color to blue or brown while worn. He could change that before putting them in by holding the case and stating which color he wanted the contacts to be, or state ‘clear’ to disable that function. The latter would also reduce the magical strain the contacts would place upon his eyes slightly.

“I’ll have to ask the Patils if there’s anything I need to be aware of before I send a thank-you note,” Harry said, Hedwig nodding before looking at him expectantly. “And yet you seem to think that I have something for you to take for me. Okay girl, what am I forgetting?”

Hedwig barked at him, and he blinked a couple of times before sighing and pulling out a normal notepad and a pencil from his handbag. He quickly scribbled out a note to Hagrid about Mrs. Norris likely following him due to smelling the rats in his pockets, then folded it and tied it to Hedwig’s leg. His owl took off a moment later, and Harry looked down at the items he’d been sent. They wouldn’t fit in his handbag, so he was going to have to go back down to the dorms before heading up to the library.

His legs twitched from the expected pain, but he gathered everything up and got to it anyway.

* * *

The ‘braiding club’, as several of the girls had decided to call it, had grown by three members today. Tracey had brought Sophie Roper with her and the Gryffindors had brought Lily Moon. Fay Dunbar and Hermione Granger had, according to Lavender, been asked but had declined. Lily said that Fay wasn’t interested in taking care of her hair beyond occasionally tying it back, and Parvati said that Granger hadn’t even waited to hear why they were doing so before dismissing the idea. On the Slytherin side, Tracey and Sophie both stated that the other three Slytherin first-year girls were too ‘stuck-up’ to bother with.

They’d started with several of the girls whining about needing money to owl-order with, and Harry had ended up offering to help there. He had plenty of money and the others could pay him back later. The girls needing assistance only accepted enough to cover a hair net, having determined that the rest should be able to wait until the holidays or next year.

After that he ended up demonstrating how he’d braided his hair for Potions, and how he intended to do so for Herbology in the future. He then worked with each girl one at a time to help them figure out how to best braid their own hair similarly. Those he wasn’t working with worked together on the ‘braid by feel’ attempts, though the three newcomers had to be given some of the basics by the other girls first.

They continued working until it was time for lunch, and Harry was thinking that he needed to find something to do with the _boys_ in his year as well. What that was he didn’t know, but it felt wrong being the only guy in the group of girls. Even if his appearance had him fitting in with the group visually. The entire group of sixteen sitting together at the Hufflepuff table for lunch probably didn’t help distinguish him from the girls.

“Hey Padma,” he said after a few minutes, finally having remembered the package he’d gotten that morning. Luckily the Patils had both worn their school robes, allowing him to tell them apart. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known which one was closer and which one was further down the table.

“Yes Harry?” the girl asked.

“I got a gift from your mother this morning, is there anything I need to take into account before I send a thank you back to her?”

“What?”

Harry pulled the letter out of his handbag, happy that he’d thought to bring it with him, and handed it over to Padma. She quickly read it, then rubbed the bridge of her nose before looking down the table at her sister. A moment later she passed the letter back. “This was obviously informal, acknowledging that you may have done our family a significant favor without intending to. A more formal gift would’ve come from our father or both of our parents. So you don’t have to worry much about customs when writing the response.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll even be nice enough to wait for you to tell my sister about the gift, though if you can figure it out with the help of others then you could try to surprise her with the results.”

“I’m still not enthusiastic about makeup, but I can see the potential use in this case and can’t argue with it. I hadn’t even known that magical contacts existed though, so that was a nice surprise.”

“We’ve had those since the sixteen hundreds or so,” Sue said. “Though they aren’t common, since having enchanted items on your eyes long-term isn’t a good idea so most people stick with glasses if they need them and only use contacts for special occasions.”

* * *

Harry had written a thank-you letter to Mrs. Patil and a letter to Aunt Petunia after lunch, then found Hedwig in the owlery so that she could deliver them when she was ready to make the trip. After that he’d attempted to find some of the first-year boys, as he’d not seen them at lunch. He couldn’t find any of them, though honestly didn’t know that many places to look for them. The Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw common rooms, the library, the Great Hall, and a quick look around the grounds and quidditch pitch had pretty much exhausted his list of potential places to find them. He’d spotted the girls in various places, but none of the boys.

He ended up sitting down in the common room working on non-magical school work for the afternoon, primarily because the little bit of exploration he’d done looking for the other boys had involved climbing enough stairs to remind him that he’d overdone it when exercising that morning. A couple of older students interrupted him, including Gabriel asking if he’d seen the other first-years. Harry had rattled off where he’d seen the girls earlier, noting that it had been just after lunch, but admitted that he hadn’t seen the boys since breakfast.

At dinner he finally found out that the missing Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw boys had independently opted to explore the castle and gotten lost in the dungeons. The stairs that the Hufflepuffs had gone down had ended up behind a door that had decided to pretend to be a wall and they didn’t know the area well enough to spot the signs needed to locate the stairs again. Meanwhile the Ravenclaw boys had likely been caught in a prank, the door needed to escape the area they were in having been locked with a spell. All nine had missed lunch and ate plenty.

“I thought we’d been pranked,” Ernie said after he’d eaten his first serving. “But Gabriel claims that some of the doors just do that. I didn’t understand any of what he was talking about regarding the signs for where the door _should_ be though, as it wasn’t pretending to be a wall anymore.”

“It probably stayed a door because he didn’t close it,” Justin added. “Though I don’t recall us closing it either. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Slytherins routinely close that door just to discourage others from exploring down there. We asked four different groups of them for help and they all told us to get lost.”

“Gabriel _really_ didn’t like hearing that one,” Roger said. “I bet a Slytherin was responsible for locking the door the Ravenclaws were stuck behind too. We should visit the library and look up unlocking charms.”

“Chapter seven or eight of our Charms book,” Harry said, causing several of the boys to look at him. “What? I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s there alongside a locking charm.”

“I vote that we try to teach ourselves those,” Ernie said. “Maybe get as many of the first-years as we can to join us?”

“Works for me, but it’s late. First thing after breakfast tomorrow? That gives us time to get the word out too.”

There were nods from the boys and Hannah, who was the only first-year girl sitting near them at the time.

* * *

That evening Harry had opted to try to cast the locking and unlocking charms ahead of when they’d get together the next day, sitting on his bed and casting them at the bathroom door. The locking charm was an absolute basic one that only worked if the target had a lock to engage, with a more advanced one apparently being taught in a few years. The unlocking charm worked on both of them though, so long as specific protections against it hadn’t been put in place as well. What those were wasn’t detailed, just that countermeasures existed and were common in wizarding homes and businesses.

The two were surprisingly easy to get down, only taking Harry half an hour total to have cast each successfully once. They also seemed like they would be incredibly useful, the unlocking charm in particular, and he decided to see if he could learn to cast them without his wand as well. Starting with the unlocking charm, as that seemed to be the more important one to be able to cast under normal circumstances.

That hadn’t gone as well, but he knew that it should be possible to do. He just had to work at it, moving between casting with his wand a couple of times while paying attention to how the magic felt and then trying to cast without it. Eventually he gave up for the night, ensured that the bathroom door was unlocked, and went to bed.

* * *

The next morning Harry had spent his extra time before he could leave the common room for his morning exercise practicing the locking and unlocking charms, mixed with trying to cast the unlocking charm wandlessly. He made it out to the common room itself a couple of minutes before six, and saw nobody else on his way out of the castle. He did, however, find that there were Gryffindors in the quidditch pitch, so he jogged around it and then back up the hill instead of using the stairs up to the stands. Two more laps down to the gate and back was enough for the day, and he headed inside.

Mr. Filch _had_ to be intentionally coming to wait for him, as the man was there to give the now-customary five points for not making a mess before Harry headed down to take a shower and get dressed for the day. He opted for shorts and a blouse today, figuring that he’d be sitting down and getting up repeatedly as they cycled through whoever was casting at the limited doors that would be available to practice with.

Susan and Hannah were the first girls out of their dorms and joined him for the walk up to breakfast, the three of them sitting at the end of the Hufflepuff table. Padma and Lisa showed up not long after and came over to the three.

“Good morning,” Padma said. “Professor Flitwick heard us talking about practicing with unlocking charms and offered to supervise when he heard why we wanted to. He even said we could use locks he has for when he normally teaches the charm.”

“Awesome,” Harry said. “I was wondering if we were going to be taking turns casting at a door.”

“I’ll spread word to the Gryffindors through my sister, have everyone joining us go to the Charms lecture hall after breakfast.”

“Will do,” Hannah said. “And thanks.”

Over the course of breakfast they were able to let all of the first-year Hufflepuffs know as well as Tracey, who promised to let the Slytherins joining them know as well. Harry got no mail, but Susan and Hannah both got letters when the owls came in. At the end of the meal most of the first-years left in a bit of a mob, all four houses represented but not all of the first-years joining them. The ‘braiding club’ were all in the group, as were the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw boys. Dunbar, Granger, Longbottom, Weasley, and Zabini had all joined them as well.

They spread out somewhat randomly when they made it to the lecture hall, though the Gryffindors and Slytherins had shifted in opposite directions to put distance between them. They didn’t exactly sit apart, but there was no chance of them accidentally mingling in the group today. A couple minutes later Professor Flitwick came in with a box floating behind him. He moved to the teacher’s podium and dropped the box onto the floor before looking over the room.

The professor nodded after a moment. “I see that we’re missing a quarter of the first-years, but good to the rest of you for wanting to learn a spell ahead of time so that you can take care of yourselves when others decide to make your lives more difficult.” He then waved his wand, causing the box he’d brought to open. A few more waves and small chests flew out of the box, one landing in front of each of them. Each actually had three locks and three lids on it. The leftmost one was essentially a thumbturn, the middle was what Harry believed was the kind of lock that could be opened with a ‘skeleton key’, and the right looked like a normal door lock from a non-magical house. “These are all currently locked, and each of the three locks is a different difficulty to open with the unlocking charm. Start with the one on the left, then work your way over. Before we go any further though, how many of you have already tried casting the charm?”

Harry probably shouldn’t have been surprised when he looked around and saw that all of the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaws had. Granger, Tracey, and Zabini also had their hands up.

“Very good,” the professor continued. “How many of you also tried the locking charm?”

Most of the Hufflepuffs, half of the Ravenclaws, and Tracey put their hands down at that. Harry supposed that learning both charms wasn’t quite as important when you were concerned about being locked in areas against your will.

“Slightly disappointing, but not unexpected,” Professor Flitwick said. “Now then, _normally_ I’d be going over this with you in November, after we’d gotten other charms that help teach the wand movements down. I will still be doing so, if only for the deeper theory aspects, but today we shall focus entirely on the practical side of things.”

The next twenty minutes were spent listening to how to cast both charms, including the correct pronunciation and the most important portions of the wand movements. They were then told to begin trying to cast both spells. The professor moved through them, providing tips and giving five points per spell to anyone who managed to cast them successfully on the third lock. Harry largely ignored this, though did help correct Justin’s pronunciation. Instead he ensured that he could cast the spells on all three locks, the last one giving him a little trouble at first, before resuming trying to cast them wandlessly on any of the locks.

He was so focused on his task that he missed Professor Flitwick coming up to the table he was sitting at and watching him for a couple of minutes. Instead he jerked slightly when the professor spoke. “Twenty points to Hufflepuff, Mr. Potter. Five for successfully casting and five for silently casting each spell. That said, may I ask what you were doing when you put your wand down?”

Harry blushed, both in embarrassment over having jumped when the professor had spoken and for being caught. “Um, I was trying to cast them wandlessly.”

“That is a very difficult skill to master under normal circumstances. Generally you will want to be able to silently cast a spell without needing the wand movements before you even begin to cast it wandlessly. That said, take another five points for Hufflepuff for the initiative.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Paying a little more attention once the professor moved on to the next table, Harry noticed that several others who had already been casting the spells successfully had started trying to do so silently. Professor Flitwick gave those doing so five more points each and a couple of tips for how to work around the incantation when he was making additional passes. Eventually the last student had at least cast the unlocking charm successfully and the professor called the session to an end. The chests were collected, though he invited them to use the room for the rest of the morning if they wanted to as it had four total doors that they could practice on.

Harry opted to leave so as to not take up any slot in using the classroom doors. He was probably one of the few of them who could always practice in his dorm room without bothering anyone else and thus didn’t need to use the classroom doors.


	8. Year 1 - Chapter 7

Justin watched Harry leave the classroom, feeling slightly guilty. He and the other guys had been avoiding Harry a bit due to the whole ‘looks more like a girl’ thing. And in some ways ‘acts more like a girl’, given how well he fit in with the majority of the girls in their year. They’d even formed a _braiding club_ because they wanted to learn how Harry braided his hair. Which was a bit daft to him, but sounded perfect for a group of girls. Which left Harry as ‘one of the girls’ instead of ‘one of the guys’.

Admittedly, Harry wasn’t missing much. They’d talked about quidditch, tried gobstones _once_ (Harry would be lucky if he never tried it, in Justin’s opinion), gotten lost multiple times and needed prefects to find them twice already, studied a little without the girls around...and that was about it. There were amazingly few things for first-years to do, or at least nothing that anyone was telling them about. The only real _sport_ was basically restricted to second year and up, most of the clubs weren’t meeting yet, and they didn’t even know enough magic to properly goof off with it.

Of course, Harry’s solution to that problem, when not with the girls, was to study. Which, to be fair, they _were_ here to learn, but you needed to take _some_ time to just have fun and unwind. Which just made it harder to approach him, though it was also possible that the braiding club was serving as ‘unwind’ time for Harry. Or perhaps he did his unwinding in the morning, when he got up crazy early to exercise? Some people used exercise to unwind, right?

* * *

After lunch the older Hufflepuffs gathered all of the first-years interested in learning about Wizard’s Chess, or in helping the others learn about it. This ended up being far more boring than Harry had expected, as the only difference from ‘muggle chess’ was that the pieces moved on their own in Wizard’s Chess. Meaning you essentially had to know how to speak the chess notation in addition to how to play in the first place.

Seeing the pieces attack each other was _not_ enough to get past how boring chess could be.

It only took ten minutes to come to that conclusion, after which Harry ended up deciding to wander the grounds before the sun set. None of the other boys wanted to join him, a combination of ‘having had enough exploration for the week’ and a couple of them actually wanting to play chess, but the five girls decided that they were going to come along.

“So are we looking for anything specific?” Megan asked.

Harry shrugged. “I mainly want a better idea of the layout of the grounds for when I’m out exercising.”

“Are you actually doing that every morning?” Sally-Anne asked.

“Yes?”

“Why?”

“Because being in good shape can’t hurt and is likely to help if I ever end up in a fight, plus a couple of our books say that a healthy witch or wizard has an easier time using magic.”

“Oooh,” Susan said. “Are you saying that you could cast the locking and unlocking charms silently because you’ve been exercising?”

Harry looked at her, then shook his head. “No, I think that’s more to do with me spending far too much time practicing them last night, coupled with trying to barely say incantations in the first place. I just went from barely saying them to not saying them and didn’t notice, but now I’m thinking that I’ll try to do that intentionally as I learn spells so that I’m not in the habit of speaking to cast them.”

“But I _know_ that I’ve gotten better results when saying the incantation louder.”

“The Introduction to Arithmancy I’ve been reading says that volume has no effect on spell power, but the belief that volume has an effect can cause a witch or wizard to put more power into the spell subconsciously. Proper pronunciation of one of the dozens of incantations every spell has is more important than volume.”

It took a moment for Harry to realize that the five girls had stopped walking, and he turned around to look at them. “What?”

“ _Dozens_ of incantations?” Sally asked.

“Do you think that the Japanese use a Latin derivative when casting? You can use arithmancy to figure out an incantation for a spell in any language you know enough of, though they almost never come out sounding perfect. That’s probably a sixth or seventh year topic though, the primer just says you _can_.”

Megan pointed at him. “How are you not in Ravenclaw?”

“The hat decided that I’d end up with more friends in Hufflepuff.”

The five didn’t seem to have a response to that, so they got moving again. They were able to see a good portion of the grounds before it started to get dark, though might’ve been able to better explore a couple of areas if Harry hadn’t spent time showing them the inside of the quidditch pitch. After that they’d determined that you couldn’t loop around the lake itself due to the wall on one side and the forbidden forest running up against the other side, and they found a tree that was _far_ too mobile to be safe to approach. Harry was happy to find out about it in proper daylight instead of running into it when it was far darker out.

At dinner Susan started a discussion with older students about silent casting and Harry’s ‘barely say the incantation’ method. The older students thought that it would make learning the spells at their age harder, but if they could make it work then they’d be much better off after their OWLs. She had then pointed out that Harry had _not noticed_ that he’d been casting the locking and unlocking charms silently. None of them were impressed when the older students dismissed that with a comment about that kind of thing being expected from the boy-who-lived.

After dinner Harry was dragged to one of the spell practice rooms so that he could explain to the other Hufflepuff first-years about his casting by barely saying the incantation method. They agreed to share the idea with the other houses, though most of that would probably happen through telling the rest of the braiding club.

* * *

Monday morning brought a new surprise to Harry’s routine, Susan dragging Hannah into the common room a couple of minutes before six. Susan was wide awake, Hannah obviously wasn’t.

“Good morning,” Harry greeted. “What are you two doing up?”

“We’re joining you to exercise,” Susan said, ignoring the mild glare she got from Hannah.

“Oh. What brings this on?”

“I decided that we’re not going to slack off in improving ourselves just because it involves a little sweating. Plus it’ll probably be a good thing if I decide to become an auror after school.”

“But I don’t _want_ to be an auror,” Hannah whined.

Susan turned to the other girl. “So you’re going to let the blood-purist gits do better than you because you didn’t feel like doing some exercise?”

Hannah glared at Susan for that, but didn’t say anything in response. Susan beamed, then turned back to Harry. “So what’s the plan this morning?”

Harry checked his watch, then gestured at the common room’s entrance. “It’s now after six, so we can get going. Unless it’s raining out my plan was to jog down to the quidditch pitch and go up and down the stairs some, though only if none of the other houses are using it this morning. They apparently get annoyed about ‘spying’.”

Susan looked less sure at that declaration, but nodded. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

“My _legs_ ,” Hannah moaned as Harry helped her and Susan back into the common room. They’d stopped long enough to knock any dirt off of their shoes and Mr. Filch had given them each five points for that, plus five more for Harry helping the other two after they’d overdone things.

“I told you that you needed to stop sooner than I did,” Harry said. “But no, you had to push until you couldn’t walk instead of easing into a more significant workout.”

“I thought you were just telling us we couldn’t handle it because you thought we weren’t good enough or something,” Susan grumbled. “Sorry about thinking that, by the way, it won’t happen again.”

“I pushed myself a little too far a couple days ago, but you two really overdid it.”

“You might have to help us shower.”

Harry blushed at that. “I can help you to your dorm room, but I think we’d get in trouble if I helped you shower.”

There was a moment of silence from Susan before he could see her blush. “Right, I forgot that you’re a boy.”

“I will help you to the hospital wing after you’ve showered, since I don’t want to give you pain relief potions without Madam Pomfrey’s permission to. I’m told that being on her bad side by doing her job for her is to be avoided.”

Harry got the two into their dorm before heading back to the boys’ side to shower and get ready for the day. He checked the schedule for the week and saw that they didn’t have Potions or Herbology today, so he went with a basic braid. It took him very little time overall, and he was in the common room finishing up the Introduction to Arithmancy book by the time the two girls emerged. They were holding each other up, and he moved over to help them.

When they stumbled into the hospital wing they found Madam Pomfrey waiting for them.

“Good morning you three,” the mediwitch greeted. “Argus warned me that I might be seeing you. Mr. Potter, help them to a couple of beds, then take a seat on one yourself. I’ll start with them, then give you a quick check-up as well.”

Harry didn’t argue and merely helped the two girls to adjacent beds before sitting in one on the other wall. Madam Pomfrey examined both girls and gave them a couple of potions each, telling them to not push themselves so hard in the future. Both of them admitted that Harry had warned them about pushing so hard and Madam Pomfrey gave him five points for doing so. She then checked him over, gave him a single potion to help with minor damage from when he’d pushed himself too hard on Saturday, and sent them on their way.

* * *

The braiding club met after classes that day, though stayed in the library working on homework instead of finding an available classroom for braiding. They also quietly discussed the whole ‘barely saying the incantation’ thing with the girls from the other houses, all of them promising to disseminate that to the boys willing to listen in their year, and found that nobody else wanted to even consider getting up early enough to join in the morning exercise. No matter how much Susan said they should.

Things would continue along those lines for the next few days. Susan and Hannah would meet Harry in the common room first thing in the morning, they’d exercise and return to get points from Filch for not making a mess, and then after classes or dinner the braiding club would meet and work on homework or braiding. Harry wouldn’t find time to hang out with the boys and would end up working on other things after dinner, sometimes in the common room and sometimes in his dorm. Herbology on the schedule for the day would prompt Harry to put his hair up in a basic bun, but he had the longest hair in their year and none of the girls bothered.

The first new element to the schedule came Thursday, when the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw first-years had their first flying lesson just after lunch. Harry made sure to wear shorts under his uniform skirt that morning, just in case, and the twenty first-years from the two houses left lunch together to head down to the lawn. There they found their instructor, Madam Hooch, setting out brooms for them.

She finished setting the brooms out, then turned her yellow eyes on them. “Okay you lot, since you’re all here a few minutes early we might as well get started. Everyone come stand by a broomstick.”

Harry ended up between Ernie and Lisa, at a broom that looked like it had seen far better days. Admittedly, it was possible that it just took a beating due to being used for lessons, and it didn’t look any better than the other nineteen.

“Stick out your right hand over your broom,” Madam Hooch called. “Your right, Mr. Entwhistle, not mine. Right, now say ‘Up!’”

To her apparent surprise, none of them shouted. Harry hadn’t even finished starting to say the word before the broom shot into his hand. Several others jumped up right away as well, but most didn’t. It took up to seven attempts at steadily increasing volumes before everyone was holding their brooms, and it seemed like a couple of them had only happened because the students had realized they were the only ones _left_.

They then got a lesson in mounting their brooms without sliding off and how to grip the brooms to retain proper control. The basics of taking off and landing were explained, and then she had them all take off at the same time. Harry was one of the few that made it off the ground properly, finding it to be almost instinctive. Ten attempts later and everyone had made it off of the ground correctly at least once, then they followed Madam Hooch in a lazy circle around the area.

After that they were invited to ‘be more daring’ if they wanted to, so long as they continued to listen to instructions. Harry took that as an invitation to roll under Stephen and Michael to his left before darting off at higher speed. Flying had jumped to the top of Harry’s list of enjoyable activities already, and he was going to have to see if he was allowed to do so outside of class time. Maybe get a broom for himself for next year when he’d be allowed his own?

Sadly, the fun only lasted half an hour before Wayne and Anthony collided in mid-air, Anthony falling off of his broom and landing on Sally-Anne. She managed a mostly-controlled landing before either of them fell off, and Harry grabbed Anthony’s broom right as Madam Hooch was directing everyone to land.

“Thank you Mr. Potter,” the woman said. “Five points to Hufflepuff for grabbing that broomstick before it got away, and I can tell you that your father would’ve been proud of your natural skills on a broom.” She then turned to the rest of the class. “Okay, line the brooms up for the next group and then you’re dismissed. I’ll be taking Goldstein, Hopkins, and Perks to be looked over by Pomfrey. Anyone not comfortable with a broom is welcome to return next week, same time, for another lesson.”

* * *

The next morning most of the first-year girls had done their hair up in buns with their bangs braided out of the way, as had Harry, to the confusion of the older students. Harry also knew that everyone in the braiding club had a potioneer’s hair net now, though they didn’t all have the other protective equipment yet. Professor Snape was obviously pleased in both morning Potions classes, though Harry obviously only saw one of those. Only a couple of the buns were left in place at lunch, but older students had noticed that the points hourglasses had increased significantly across the board from the morning due to Professor Snape giving each of them with their hair properly secured five points during class.

At the end of the day, when the braiding club met in the library to do homework, the three Gryffindors had brought Hermione Granger with them. The girl was a little iffy about Harry in particular, but _really_ wanted to know what was going on with the points given in Potions that morning. She wasn’t happy to learn that she’d have to learn to tame her hair, or that she had to order more equipment with money she didn’t have. Finding out that Harry was both the one who had been teaching the others braiding _and_ that he was willing to provide money for the owl-order of a hair net had her visibly conflicted.

She’d agreed in the end, but also swore that there had to be a spell to make this all easier and vowed to find it.

* * *

The school seemed to fall into a routine at that point, the braiding club membership having been ‘set’ with the final member. Despite being the ‘braiding club’ they actually spent most of their time together studying or practicing magic. They kept working at the ‘cast everything silently’ trick even as the boys decided it was more trouble than it was worth, though Weasley surprised them all when he approached them about it once and seemed to be trying to work at it himself. To less success in class, but that was probably due to working at it less frequently as he also spent a lot of time playing Wizard’s Chess according to the Gryffindors.

Hermione did eventually find a hairstyling spell, only to balk at trying it due to the warning about it possibly _pulling your hair out_ if miscast. That was the last straw to her resisting learning how to braid her hair properly, and within a week she would be following Harry’s example of at least a basic braid every day. Supposedly for practice only, but he suspected that she was getting used to her hair being somewhat under control. That was why he was constantly using a braid, anyway.

Harry himself eventually came to accept that he was now ‘one of the girls’, to the girls and the school at large. It was still a larger group of friends than he’d had in non-magical school, even if he’d have preferred _some_ boys to be included in his list of good friends at school. At the same time, being ‘one of the girls’ had the benefit of seeming to make him almost invisible to the upper years, and the large group of girls including all four houses was enough to deter the few among their yearmates that might want to cause trouble otherwise.

Susan and Hannah remained the only ones joining him for exercise in the mornings, though they did decide to use one of the rooms normally used for Hufflepuff spell practice on rainy days instead of using the common room or one of their dorm rooms. The two girls were steadily improving and Hannah’s overall confidence noticeably improved in the process. All three of them were dreading when snow would start to cover the grounds though, as that would signal the beginning of it being problematic to exercise outside for months.

And Harry continued to note whenever his scar hurt, checking in with Madam Pomfrey about it every other week on average. There was a definite and irrefutable pattern there, since Professor Quirrell was _always_ present when there was no other explanation, such as the day that he was hit in the forehead with a book. The professor was also the only one present every time, as it had happened once in a restroom that was empty other than the two of them. Sadly, they still hadn’t gotten to the point of doing anything about it.

Things generally stayed stable until breakfast on October fifteenth, when Gabriel came up to Harry waving something in his hand.

“Potter!” the prefect called. “You need to see this.”

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, only to have the item the older boy was holding dropped in front of him. Looking down, he found that it was the Daily Prophet and he was the subject of the front page article.

**Harry Potter Disgraces Family - Pretending to be a Girl**

The picture under the headline was of him jogging out of the castle with Susan and Hannah. A quick skim of the article had him trying to find out where they got the idea that he was pretending to be a girl and how he was disgracing his family. Nothing was actually specified _in_ the article, apparently assuming that the fact he wore girls’ clothing was sufficient evidence to make the claims in the first place.

“This is rude but I don’t see what I can do about it,” Harry finally said.

“What you need to do is watch your mail,” Gabriel explained. “People see this kind of thing and they send all kinds of horrible things.”

“Oh.” All of a sudden having that mail block seemed like a good thing, but being unable to be contacted for legitimate things was probably worse in the long run.

“Be careful opening things you aren’t expecting, and don’t be afraid to ask us prefects or the staff if you’re concerned about something.”

“Will do.”

Nothing else of note happened that day, but the next morning Harry got a pile of mail. Gabriel and two other prefects had sat near him expecting this, casting detection charms for Harry while doing their best to also explain what each did and where they’d learned them. Those didn’t help when a red envelope was dropped by an older owl.

“Shit,” one of the prefects said. “That’s a howler. Silencing walls?”

“Definitely,” Gabriel responded, and the three quickly cast around them. “Okay Potter, you’re going to have to touch that red one quick.”

Harry stared at the red envelope, which was significantly smoking, then reached out and touched it. That was enough to cause it to jump up into the air and start screaming, but he only heard “HARRY JA...” in a woman’s voice before all sound came to a stop for him. He watched the letter ‘speaking’ for almost two minutes before it finally stopped and fell to the table, opening up as a single sheet of parchment.

Gabriel waved his wand in Harry’s direction a moment later and the normal noises of the Great Hall suddenly returned. Though there was some fairly loud whining from someone at the Gryffindor table asking why nobody ever did that for them when their mother sent them a howler.

“Those things are a menace,” Gabriel said, grabbing the parchment and handing it to Harry. “But safe if you’re ready for them and don’t let them explode open. I think that one was from Molly Weasley, though she normally only sends howlers to Fred and George.”

Harry read the parchment, finding that it was a retread of the article he’d read the day before coupled with statements that implied that Mrs. Weasley would’ve raised him better and some comments about him needing firm parental figures. It ended with a statement that she would set him straight over the summer, which made absolutely no sense to him as he’d have no reason to _see_ her over the summer. Frowning, he looked at the two piles of letters that the three prefects had set aside for various reasons, back at the parchment he was holding, and then turned to Gabriel. “How many of these things are against the law?”

“Er, the four letters in the smaller pile there all came up as possibly being legal issues. You’ll want a professor to check those. Everything else, including the howler, is technically legal so long as they don’t get sent to a muggle residence. Actually, you can send howlers anywhere, they’re set to only go off like that if they’re in a magical area, but some of the other things...”

That had Harry frowning, and he looked down at the parchment he was still holding. He then blinked a couple of times. “I don’t suppose you know how to send howlers?”

“You buy howler parchment and envelopes, write on them, seal them up, pump in enough magic to make your point, and send them just like any other letter. Why?”

Harry grinned. “Can I owl-order some?”

Gabriel and both of the other prefects stared at Harry for a moment, then looked at each other. All three grinned after a moment, and Gabriel turned back to Harry. “You can, and I can get you a form for it. I don’t know why nobody has ever thought about that though, as there are at least a dozen students that get the blasted things on a semi-regular basis.”

“How many of them only get them from their parents?”

The prefects all flinched. “Okay, yes, that might be a good reason to not retaliate with howlers of your own.”

They finished scanning mail, Harry spent some time going through the _safe_ letters while finishing his breakfast, and Professor Sprout took away both piles of _dangerous_ letters to be double-checked and either send them on to the DMLE as-is or render them safe enough for him to read. The overall trend in the letters was parroting what the Prophet had said and assuming the absolute worst of him on absolutely no evidence.

He would think on things until after classes, Gabriel getting him the order form he needed at lunch. Sitting with the braiding club, he made sure they all knew what he planned to do with Molly Weasley. Tracey recommended sending one more howler, to Rita Skeeter for writing the article without actually doing any research, plus a proper letter to the editor explaining _why_ he dressed the way he did. Hermione had also gotten an odd look on her face at that and wandered into the library stacks.

Before dinner he sent Hedwig off with the order form. He was ordering much more howler parchment than he thought he’d need, figuring that if it was normal to send the things then he’d be better off with a decent supply. That and he could give or sell some of it to others easily enough. After dinner the first-years had gone to bed so that they’d be well-rested for Astronomy that evening.

* * *

More letters of varying safety arrived over the next couple of days. Harry had decided to not respond to most of them, and was merely waiting for Hedwig to return with the howler paper before sending out the three letters he was planning on. He’d already written the one for the Prophet’s editor and had an outline for the two howlers ready. Friday’s Prophet had included an article about the first few people to have sent actionable illegal items in their letters being arrested by the DMLE, with a statement that ‘justifiable outrage did not grant an exception from the law, especially when sending things to a school full of children’.

It came across as being a ‘they were fully in the right but were only being punished because they risked innocents’ rather than an actual condemnation.

More importantly, Friday was when Hedwig returned with the order of howler paper. That was brought straight to Harry’s dorm room and placed in his trunk for safekeeping, though only after Susan had gone wide-eyed at how much he’d purchased. Then again, she probably hadn’t expected him to buy it in bulk just to get the price per howler down to a few knuts. Besides, short of someone confiscating the lot of it he was probably set for his entire school career. Especially if people learned that sending him a howler was going to get one sent right back at them and stopped sending them.

That afternoon the braiding club met in the classroom that had become their unofficial clubroom, though Sophie had voiced that she was considering asking for it to be made official like some of the other clubs had. There Harry filled in his outlines for the howlers, having waited to do so to make it easier to focus on the emotions while writing on the howler parchment, then wrote the howlers themselves. Those were then placed into their addressed envelopes, but Hermione interrupted him before he could push magic in to seal and activate them.

“Did I miss a step?” Harry asked, picking up one of the two copies of the instructions that came with every howler sitting in front of him.

“No,” Hermione said, flipping through a book. “One minute...here it is.” She turned the book around and placed it down in front of him. “According to this, standard howler envelopes have a flaw, in that they accept far more magic than they need. The more you push in the louder the howler gets. You can tell that you’re overcharging it because the envelope gets darker, but you have to stop before it reaches black or you’ll burn the magic out.”

Raising an eyebrow, Harry picked the book up and looked over what was written there. He found that it said just what she claimed, but also that if the recipient didn’t open the overcharged howler then the explosion of it opening itself would be larger as well. This was all written as a warning _against_ doing so though, as it could override the protections against going off in non-magical areas.

“So you want me to overcharge one or both of these?” Harry finally said.

“Only a little?” Hermione said, not sounding sure of herself. “Molly Weasley apparently annoys the whole school with them whenever any of her children misbehave and Rita Skeeter is apparently a horrible gossip columnist pretending to be a mainstream reporter. But if you need to send either of them a second one I figure you can charge it as much as you can.”

“Heh. I wonder how big of an explosion that could create.”

“Now I’m thinking that Fay is going to think she missed out,” Lily said, grinning slightly. “She’s been whining about not having found any explosive spells she can handle yet.”

Harry decided not to ask, and instead focused on the two howlers. Following the instructions, he pushed his own magic into the envelopes, watching as they filled with red. Normally you’d stop when the envelope turned entirely red and gave off a slight glow, and he continued to push magic in until he could tell that the red had darkened several shades. When he was done he had two slightly dark red envelopes, which went into his bag next to the letter to the Prophet’s editor.

With that done he left the last of the candy he’d brought on the train for the others to pick at while he headed up to the owlery alone. There he found Hedwig waiting with two other owls, causing him to raise an eyebrow. “And here I was expecting you to want to handle this alone.”

She gave him a look as he pulled the three envelopes out of his bag, pushing the other two owls forward for the howler to Molly Weasley and the letter to the Prophet’s editor. She insisted on taking the howler for Rita Skeeter.

“So girl,” Harry said as the other two owls flew off. “Are you going to bring this to her at the worst possible time for her to get it?”

Hedwig bobbed her head, and he almost swore that she did an owl equivalent of _grinning_ , before taking off into the darkening sky.


	9. Year 1 - Chapter 8

Ginny smiled as she looked at the picture of Harry that she’d cut out of the Prophet earlier that week. Sure, it had two other girls in it, but she was okay with that because it had Harry in it. She was even okay with him looking like a girl, as that would make it less likely that other girls would want him for themselves. Besides, she had six older brothers and liked to dress up in their old clothes at times, so it just made her and Harry a better fit for each other.

“Ginny!” her mother hollered from downstairs. “Breakfast!”

Sighing, she put the picture away, since she didn’t want her mother to find out that she’d kept it. She then headed downstairs, idly wondering why her mother had been so upset about Harry’s appearance.

Sitting at the table across from her father, she watched her mother preparing their breakfast plates. While this was happening several owls arrived, which was perfectly normal. Most of them went to her father, one went to her, and one continued into the kitchen where her mother was. She ignored that while collecting the letter from the owl that had come to her, though did think it odd that the owl that had flown into the kitchen was already leaving.

She’d just determined that the letter for her was from Bill when there was a loud bang from the kitchen, followed immediately by yelling she didn’t recognize at a volume that was impossibly loud and hurt her ears.

_“MOLLY WEASLEY, HOW DARE YOU ACT LIKE YOU HAVE ANY RIGHT TO DICTATE HOW I DRESS OR ACT! YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER, I WAS NOT PLACED IN YOUR CARE, AND I’VE BARELY INTERACTED WITH ANY OF YOUR CHILDREN!_

_FURTHER, EVEN IF I WERE TO DEIGN TO STAY WITH YOUR FAMILY YOU WOULD HAVE NO RIGHT TO ‘SET ME STRAIGHT’, WHATEVER THAT MEANS IN YOUR DELUDED HEAD!_

_LASTLY, I AM NOT ONE OF YOUR CHILDREN, WILL NEVER BE ONE OF YOUR CHILDREN, AND WILL NOT STAND TO BE HUMILIATED IN FRONT OF OTHERS BECAUSE YOU CANNOT ACCEPT THOSE FACTS! I CANNOT TELL YOU TO NOT SEND HOWLERS TO YOUR CHILDREN, BUT I CAN TELL YOU TO NOT SEND THEM TO ME!”_

It took a few minutes, during which her ears kept ringing, but her father figured out that _Harry_ had sent her mother a howler. Which meant that her mother had apparently sent one to Harry, and Ginny didn’t like that. Her father also decided that all three of them needed to go to Saint Mungo’s to have their ears checked, which was hard to get through to her mother as she didn’t seem to be able to hear either of them at all. Ginny was perfectly happy with that decision, especially when the healer was able to get her ears to stop ringing.

* * *

A couple of days after sending off his letters, and despite not having a subscription, Harry found a copy of the Sunday Prophet delivered to him. Included was a letter to him from the editor apologizing for the article from earlier in the week and thanking him for the letter he’d sent. Opening the newspaper, he found that he was mentioned in _both_ of the front-page headlines.

The first served as a retraction of sorts for the previous article about him.

**Harry Potter’s Appearance - The Truth**

It had no picture but described how little he had from his parents, not yet having even seen so much as a single picture of his father, and how he grew up with his mother’s clothing trunk. Most of it was details from his letter, but it included a call for Magical Britain to at least attempt to collect photos of his family for their hero.

The other article was more of a surprise.

**Rita Skeeter Arrested - Harry Potter’s Howler Reveals Animagus Secret**

There was a picture of a burn mark in an office, described as being Amelia Bones’s office in the DMLE. Hedwig had apparently bypassed the owl redirection wards to deliver his howler to Rita while she was using her unregistered animagus form to spy in Madam Bones’s office. The DMLE wasn’t planning on pressing charges against him for the damage, and said that he’d done them a favor by accidentally revealing a loophole in the owl redirection wards when it came to unauthorized visitors.

He’d just finished reading that article when the owl that Madam Bones used came down the table to him from where it had been delivering a letter to Susan. He took the letter for him from the owl and watched it fly off for a moment. Opening the letter, he found that it said the same thing the paper did regarding not pressing charges against him for damage to her office, but it clarified that he couldn’t be blamed for Skeeter having been in there. It also described when to stop charging howlers, for safety and statute of secrecy reasons. Apparently Skeeter, Madam Bones, Molly Weasley, her husband Arthur, and their daughter Ginny had all needed to visit a healer.

Harry felt a little guilty about having injured those around the intended targets of his howlers, but the letter also assured him that the injuries had all been trivial to deal with and none of the bystanders blamed him for ‘overdoing it’ with his first howlers.

The letter ended with a note that they were working on charging those found to have sent illegal curses or materials to him, but not all of the letters had been able to be traced back to their origins yet.

Finishing his breakfast, he collected the mail and headed to the unofficial braiding club room. Lisa had decided that they should get ahead of the curriculum for casting silently and the junk letters would probably make good levitation charm targets. The morning working on that was uneventful, though Harry spent his time trying to get wandless locking and unlocking charms to work on the door while the rest of the group tried to cast silent levitations charms.

At lunch things got weird. The entire group had entered the Great Hall together, only to be intercepted by the Weasley twins. Harry didn’t think he’d ever spoken to them, though he’d had them pointed out before as pranksters to watch out for.

“Mr. Potter,” the one on the left greeted. “And friends, we suppose.”

“We apologize for the lack of fanfare,” the other said. “But we felt that this couldn’t wait.”

“Our sister informs us that after that dreadful incident the other day you sent our mother a howler of your own.”

“Strong one, too, if she needed a healer.”

“Glad mum doesn’t send us that kind.”

“That would be unusually problematic, yes. Where were we going with this again?”

The two paused, looked back over the group, and the one on the right snapped his fingers. “Right, the medal!”

That had the one on the left nodding, frowning, and digging into his robe pockets for a moment. He quickly found what he was looking for and pulled out a medal on a ribbon. “The medal!”

“We hereby present you with this medal commemorating this momentous occasion!”

“It also serves as an indication that we shall not target you with pranks.”

“Because your howlers are officially scarier than our mum’s are.”

“At least hers don’t require a healer afterwards.”

The twin on the left knelt down and held the medal out to Harry, who carefully picked it up. It was a crude one, with what looked like a howler on it. Flipping it over he found the previous day’s date on the back. By the time he looked up from examining it the twins had gone back to the Gryffindor table, acting like nothing had happened.

Harry looked around at the group of girls. “Do any of you have any clue?”

The girls all shook their heads.

* * *

Over the course of the next week Harry received a small number of apologies and a much larger number of photographs of Potters. His parents, grandparents, and some extended family that he’d never heard of before then. Many had stories included, but the vast majority only had names and dates written on them. Three people had even sent him Wizarding Portraits of Potters, though from generations back. Harry had considered hanging those in his dorm for about five minutes, then realized that they’d be watching him constantly if he did. Luckily none of them had a problem with being stored in his trunk until he had a proper home of his own to hang them up in.

After the deluge of letters on Tuesday he’d come to realize that he would need to owl-order photo albums to put the photographs in, and lost pretty much the entire last weekend of the month to filling them after the albums showed up on Friday. Keeping up with things as they continued to trickle in was easier after that, though he could’ve done without a few items that showed up. He wasn’t desperate enough for things from his parents to want unwashed underwear stolen from them during their school years, but various people had sent twenty total pieces to him so far anyway.

The prefects had barely needed to be asked before they used those as vanishing practice.

On the morning of the thirty-first he’d only gotten a single letter containing a photograph, but Hedwig had also delivered a note from the Headmaster asking for an afternoon meeting. Included were basic instructions on how to get to his office and a password. Though he didn’t expect the Headmaster to know about Twix.

Morning classes went by quickly, and at lunch Hermione joined the Hufflepuffs in order to whine about Seamus Finnigan being a jerk after Charms that morning. Harry and most of the braiding club had gotten passes on their homework on the levitation charm because they could all perform it silently and Finnigan hadn’t liked that. He’d also not wanted to say it to their faces, or so it seemed, but Hermione had heard him trying to insult the whole group.

After lunch everyone went their own ways. Harry had originally planned to spend some time flying before the feast, hoping that would lift his spirits a bit so that he wouldn’t stick out by moping about it being the anniversary of his parents’ deaths during the feast, but instead prepared for his meeting with the Headmaster. Not that he knew what it was going to be about, he just felt that it would be better to clean up before meeting with the man. He left with plenty of time available and made it to the gargoyle well before he needed to.

“Interesting,” Harry said to himself. “I could’ve sworn that I’ve been down this hallway before and not seen you here.”

He examined the hallway for a few minutes, decided that even if he was right he wasn’t going to figure that out because this was a ‘no distinguishing portraits’ hallway, and gave the gargoyle the password. It stepped aside, and Harry marveled at the magical winding escalator revealed behind the gargoyle. Followed by wondering if there were more that existed for older staff to get around more easily.

“Come in,” the Headmaster’s voice called before Harry could knock on the door at the top of the stairs.

Harry pushed the door open and stepped into the office, finding himself in a large circular room. There were little noises coming from silver instruments on tables, some whirring while others seemed to emit puffs of short-lived smoke. Portraits covered those sections of wall not occupied by other items such as bookshelves. He noticed the Sorting Hat on a shelf behind the large, claw-footed desk. The Headmaster had stepped out from behind the desk, and was gesturing at two chairs set at a small table near the fireplace.

“I dare say that this need not be as formal as sitting at my desk would imply,” the Headmaster said. “Besides, it is quite buried in parchment right now. I’d offer you a lemon drop, but I lost track of the dish earlier in the week and haven’t found it yet. I’d also introduce you to Fawkes, but today he’s volunteering at Saint Mungo’s.”

Harry looked over at the desk as he sat down in one of the two chairs, noting that there did seem to be a lot of parchment on it. “You seem quite busy.”

“Sadly, that happens when one is saddled with three full time jobs and only desires to keep the only one they’re permitted to quit. I have yet to convince the International Confederation of Wizards to remove me as Supreme Mugwump, the Wizengamot to choose a new Chief Warlock, or a sitting Minister to take action to render me ineligible to retain either position. Should it ever come up in your lifetime I shall highly recommend that you avoid accepting positions that others have to remove you from.”

That seemed like a very good idea, all things considered. “As interesting as that is, sir, may I ask why you wanted to see me?”

“Ah, yes.” Harry watched as he produced a wand and waved it across the room, causing a box to float over to them. “I honestly _should_ have done this on or shortly after your birthday, but in my old age things have started to slip my mind. In fact, it was only looking for other items that led me to remember most of what I have gathered.”

Harry looked at the box. “Gathered?”

“There are a number of vaults in the school, intended for and used for a variety of purposes. Some have been lost for a time, but there are several that are only accessible to the sitting Headmaster. Ten years ago tonight I placed a number of items into one of those vaults, to keep them safe until they could be returned to you. I then promptly forgot about them amidst the rest of my duties.”

Another wave of the man’s wand had the box open, and a thick frame lifted out of it and onto the table. “To start with, Mr. Potter, I have your parents’ wands and wedding rings. I took the liberty of obtaining a frame for them.”

Harry’s eyes went wide, and he reached out to pick up the frame. Inside were two wands with little plaques identifying them, the rings sitting below the plaques. His father’s wand looked well-used and cared for, but his mother’s had a couple of burn marks on it. The rings were both simple gold bands, his father’s larger than his mother’s. He only pulled his eyes away from the frame when he heard something else land on the table.

“Next I have two items your mother entrusted to me,” the Headmaster said, gesturing to two folded parchments with smaller parchments stuck to them. “I never got them to work for me, and to this day I don’t know if they’re a prank. I believe that I’ve had two others just like these before, but the first I destroyed trying to examine it and the second was destroyed similarly, though that time I had help. That time we determined that whatever the parchments are, there’s an accidental security measure built in. Deep examination to determine how they work overloads their ability to store magic and they violently burn out. I have included the notes your mother left for me on their supposed use, in case you have better luck than I did.”

Picking up one of the two, he found that the larger parchment was blank while the smaller bit of parchment had neat writing on it mentioning activation and deactivation. A mystery to be played with later, most likely, especially if the Headmaster hadn’t had any luck with them.

“Next I have an old family heirloom that was lent to me for study,” the Headmaster continued as a bundle of cloth floated out of the box. “This is the oldest invisibility cloak known to me to exist, and I doubt that I’m the first to be unable to determine the truth of why that is. All I can say for sure is that it has been passed down in your family for generations and your father in particular got quite a lot of use out of it exploring the castle.”

Another wave of the man’s wand had a mirror appearing, and Harry took the invitation to stand up and pull the cloak on. Looking in the mirror, all that was visible was his head, floating there. Pulling the cloak over his head hid even that.

“Sadly,” the Headmaster said. “You can’t wear it all the time. But if you’d like I believe you could wear the last item I have here.”

Curious, Harry pulled the cloak off as he turned to look at the man, who had a necklace in his hand. Harry couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of it, or the pendant on it that looked remarkably like his scar in its basic shape and size. “What is that?”

“Your mother wasn’t known for wearing jewelry of any kind other than her wedding ring, but I found that she had been wearing this the night she died. I don’t think anyone would find it odd if you desired to wear it in remembrance of her.”

Harry reached out and took the necklace, staring at the pendant the whole time. It almost felt like someone else was moving his hands as he opened the catch on the chain, his eyes finally coming off of the pendant as he pulled the chain around his neck and closed the catch. A moment later he closed his eyes as an incredibly bright light filled the room, followed by incredible pain exploding in his forehead.

* * *

“They must be sowilo runes,” a female voice said from Harry’s left as he drifted back into consciousness. “The one on his forehead would be pointing inward instead of outward, looking reversed because we’re seeing it from behind.”

“That does help explain a few things,” the Headmaster’s voice said. “And it’s entirely possible that I missed confounding and compulsion magic on the necklace designed to keep others from finding it unusual and to ensure that Mr. Potter placed it around his neck when he next had the opportunity.”

“I think that likely, yes. I wish I knew more about what was done that night.”

Harry opened his eyes as he attempted to say something, but only groaned and flinched back from the bright light of the room instead. A moment later someone else had rushed up to him. They did something, and then the bed he was in folded slightly to raise his head. A bottle of some kind was brought to his lips after that, and he somewhat reluctantly drank it. The taste was horrible, but the lingering pain he’d not paid much attention to started to fade almost immediately afterwards.

Someone pushed his glasses into his left hand, and he carefully placed them onto his face. There was a moment where things were _differently_ blurry before everything shifted into focus. He was in a bed in the hospital wing, with the Headmaster and one of the elective teachers on his left and Madam Pomfrey on his right.

“My apologies,” the Headmaster said. “I honestly had no clue that you’d have any reaction to your mother’s necklace, let alone that it was a key component to whatever she did to protect you ten years ago.”

“What happened?” Harry asked.

The Headmaster adjusted his own glasses for a moment before speaking. “In hindsight, you were obviously compelled to place the necklace around your neck. As soon as you did so it started to glow a bright white, the effect spreading over your entire body a moment later. Your scar stood out as a black gash in the light for a second, at which point the darkness seemed to be violently torn apart by the light. I do believe that there was even an inhuman scream, but that could just be an aspect of your own cry of pain. You then collapsed as the glow seemed to pull into your body, and I immediately brought you to Madam Pomfrey.”

“Your magic is much more stable than it was,” Madam Pomfrey continued. “Whatever was in your scar was affecting your eyes as well, and the scar itself has healed into what looks more like a birthmark than a scar. It’s still magically active, but no longer negatively affecting your health.”

A wave of the mediwitch’s wand produced a hand mirror, which she used to show Harry his forehead. The scar was definitely less noticeable, more of a slightly darker area of skin above his eye. It also tingled slightly when he focused on it, but in no way was the tingling painful.

“That aside,” the mediwitch said. “Now that the lingering headache has been taken care of, I see no reason to keep you here beyond professional curiosity. Oh, and if you have any old pairs of muggle glasses you will likely find that they are no longer remotely suitable. The lack of pressure on your eyes from your scar has essentially inverted the deviation causing your vision problems. Luckily you have magical eyeglasses available already.”

“Excuse me,” the Headmaster interjected. “Before we allow Mr. Potter to depart, I think it would be prudent to ensure that the changes in his magic have not negatively affected his connection to his wand.”

Madam Pomfrey looked at the Headmaster, then nodded. “If you think it prudent.” Turning back to Harry, she cast a couple of spells on him. “Okay Mr. Potter, if you’d bring out your wand and cast a Lumos?”

Focusing, Harry brought his wand to his hand. He wasn’t sure, but it felt slightly easier than it had before. As soon as the wand was in his hand he lit up the tip, smirking at the shocked look on the mediwitch’s face. She recovered quickly, cast a couple more spells, and then nodded.

“I don’t see any problem with his wand connection,” she said. “It might even be slightly stronger than usual, almost like he won it in battle instead of merely being chosen by it.”

“Won it in battle?” Harry asked.

“Wands can be incredibly fickle things,” the Headmaster explained. “Nobody knows why, but defeating another and claiming their wand for yourself can provide a bond greater than that provided by being chosen by another wand. It is not something that happens in all cases, some wands seemingly being more loyal to those they choose and circumstances mattering quite a bit regardless. If you ever want to learn more you could speak with Ollivander over the summer, I’m sure he’d be willing to tell you quite a bit about wand lore.”

Harry considered that for a moment, and what had apparently happened, before he blanched. “Does that mean that my wand originally chose my _scar?_ ”

“It may be possible, and there is no way to tell for certain, but if it did then you have won its allegiance and it is now truly yours.”

Harry looked at the wand he was still holding, extinguished the light on it, and popped it back into the holster. Madam Pomfrey looked slightly surprised at that as well, probably because the holster wasn’t enchanted to pull the wand in. That done, he checked his watch, finding that maybe forty-five minutes had passed.

“I do believe that we should go pack up the other items that I left in my office,” the Headmaster said. “And then you may wish to take time to clean up before the feast. I dare say that your hair in particular could use some touching up at a minimum.”

Blinking, Harry grabbed his braid and pulled it in front of him, finding that it was indeed partially undone now. To a degree that he was probably going to have to brush his hair out before re-braiding it.

* * *

Harry had placed the frame with his parents’ wands and rings in his trunk for safe keeping. He’d done the same with the invisibility cloak, even if on some level he wanted to keep it handy. The problem with that was that he didn’t feel like he had a good way to keep it safe on his person, so into his locked trunk it went. The mystery parchments he left on his desk for later, and then he spent almost an hour dealing with his hair. It had somehow become incredibly knotted as it came loose from the braid and fought him more than usual as a result.

Once he felt he was presentable again he wandered out to see if he could find any of the others. None of the first-years were in the common room or their dorm rooms, and the unofficial braiding club room was empty as well. He checked the library, then wandered outside. There he finally found the majority of the first-years near the far too mobile tree. He really needed to find out the official name for it.

Watching for a moment, he came to the conclusion that there were two main groups. Most of the girls and half of the boys were spectators, with the rest being participants in getting as close to the tree as they dared. That included getting close enough to need to dodge tree limbs. All of which seemed incredibly reckless, and yet was hard to walk away from now that he realized what they were doing.

Which, of course, neatly explained why most of the first-years were watching this idiocy.

“Do I want to know how this started?” Harry asked, startling Hermione.

“Oh,” the girl said once she’d recovered. “It’s just you. As for this, I wasn’t here at the start, but I think they’re trying to get a wand away from the tree?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Harry moved around the group of first-years and saw that there was indeed a wand on the ground under the tree. Fay was obviously trying to reach it, but jumped back just in time to not be hit by several branches. He sighed and stepped forward, the others trying to get the wand giving him a look. He held his hand out, and a moment later his magic latched onto the wand and pulled it to him.

“So who lost their wand?” Harry asked as he turned around, only to find all of the first-years staring at him. “What?”

“Wandless summoning?” Zabini asked. “At eleven?”

“He was raised in the muggle world,” Isobel answered. “Didn’t know he _needed_ a wand to do things after bouts of accidental magic, and taught himself a few things without one. It’s apparently not entirely uncommon outside of Slytherin.”

“Damn.”

Fay came up to Harry, shaking her head. “Didn’t think about finding someone who could just summon my wand. Thanks, Harry.”

“No problem,” Harry said as he handed Fay the wand. “Do I want to know how it ended up under the scary tree?”

“I, er, _might_ have tripped and rolled down the hill, and it _might_ have flown off when I stopped.”

“Ah.”

“Which means I probably need to go clean up now. I just hope I don’t end up needing a second shower due to getting stuck next to Weasley.”

That had him blinking. “What?”

“Ronald is an incredibly messy eater,” Lily answered. “Sadly, the house tables magically size to fit everyone and there are never enough extra seats to put a proper buffer around him.”

“Oh. I don’t think I’ve had any reason to eat with him yet.”

“And you’re lucky that you haven’t, but it’s a feast tonight so we can’t hide at another house’s table.”

“Scary tree?” Hermione asked a moment later, when it was obvious that the discussion about Weasley was over.

Harry shrugged. “I have no clue what it’s called and haven’t gotten around to asking anyone about it.”

“It’s a whomping willow, listed in the back of the assigned Herbology textbook.”

“Neat. I can stop calling it the scary tree now. Though I might need to try using it for dodging practice sometime when I haven’t visited the hospital wing already, Fay looked like she was getting a decent workout.”

Hermione stared at him for a moment, then shook her head and wandered off mumbling something about him being a boy. He shrugged and moved over to the other Hufflepuff first-years.

“How did your meeting with the Headmaster go?” Justin asked.

“I could’ve done without the visit to the hospital wing,” Harry answered. “But overall it went quite well.”

“Why did you end up in the hospital wing?” Susan asked. “Did you touch something you shouldn't have in the Headmaster’s office?”

“No, it was a good thing. I’m better than ever. And he had my parents’ wands and a couple other things to return to me.”

“Why did he...oh, you’re the _last_ Potter, so there was nobody else to hold onto them.”

“Yeah.” Though for some reason the reminder wasn’t hitting him as hard as it had been earlier.

“Crap,” Ernie said, looking at his robes. “Can we get in trouble for being filthy at a feast?”

“Probably,” Sally-Anne answered.

“Then those of us who tried to help Fay by getting close to that blasted tree probably need to clean up.”

* * *

The Great Hall was very well decorated for the feast. Live bats flew over their heads, many of the candles were in carved pumpkins, and it looked to Harry like someone had actually added cobwebs to the rafters. Because normally things were quite clean up there. He sat down among the other first-years at the Hufflepuff table, and there were no speeches by the Headmaster before food appeared on all of the tables like it had at the welcome feast.

Harry had just started to fill his plate when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the Great Hall, looking terrified with his turban sitting wrong on his head. The professor reached the staff table, right in front of the Headmaster’s chair, and gasped. “Troll ... in the dungeons ... thought you ought to know.”

Then the man fainted, making Harry wonder why he was teaching Defense. Though he also noticed that his scar...or perhaps forehead, now, didn’t hurt at all with the man so close to him in the room. Which was a bit of a first for him, though the Great Hall was one of the places that his scar _hadn’t_ been guaranteed to hurt when he was in the same room as the professor. Assuming he stayed at the other end of the room, anyway.

The room erupted into chaos, and it took the Headmaster firing off firecrackers from the end of his wand to get everyone to calm down. “Prefects,” he called. “Lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately!”

“Our dormitories are _in the dungeons_ ,” one of the Slytherins yelled.

That brought the Headmaster up short. “Right. Okay, prefects, get a head count and make sure everyone's here. We’ll barricade the doors until we know that the hallways are safe.”

It didn’t take long for prefects from all four houses to report that everyone was accounted for, and Dumbledore led the heads of house out into the school. The other professors stayed behind to watch over the students as the doors were sealed, presumably not being as useful in a fight or by some kind of unseen agreement. Professor Quirrell was moved off to the side and placed on a conjured cot until it was safe to bring him to the hospital wing, and the students all looked at each other and shrugged before returning to eating. There wasn’t much _else_ to do while they waited.

Nearly an hour later the five adults returned, declared the troll dealt with, and the cot Professor Quirrell was on was levitated to bring him to the hospital wing. That seemed to be enough to wake him, though, and he insisted that he just needed to rest properly after the troll had taken him by surprise. The other professors gave him odd looks at that, but allowed him to head to his quarters on his own anyway.

At the end of the feast the prefects were charged with making sure that all students made it back to the dormitories safely. The heads of house trailed the students and sealed the common room entrances for the evening once all students were inside, apparently intending to do a combination of a second pass and figuring out how the troll made it into the school in the first place.

All in all, it was an incredibly boring ‘exciting’ feast.


	10. Year 1 - Chapter 9

Filius sighed as he finally made it to his quarters that evening. He’d just unsealed the Ravenclaw common room so that he didn’t have to get up quite so early, but was still a little too hyped up to sleep. They’d found the hole in the wards that the troll had entered through, the same one that Quirinus had brought the other one through over the summer. A bit of a mistake on their parts, having expected that to close up on its own. And indeed it might’ve, but not before the current crop of first-years graduated based on the size it was today. Albus had expended the energy needed to force it closed to prevent any more trolls from slipping through looking for the other two.

Going through his nightly routines wasn’t enough to settle his combat high, so Filius sat down to move some of his quick notes from today’s classes into more formal records. Most of which were tied to the first-year students. That made him smile, as many of them were generating results that spat in the face of traditional idiocy. If a group of first-years from all walks of life could learn to cast their spells silently then there was no excuse for the NEWT students to not do the same. It obviously wasn’t possible only for the strongest of magicals! He just wished that more than two of the boys were taking the effort.

Then again, he probably shouldn’t be _too_ surprised. Mr. Potter appeared to be treated as just another girl in most social respects and most boys didn’t _want_ to emulate girls in any fashion. Just like most girls didn’t generally want to emulate boys. There were always exceptions, of course, but Mr. Potter’s somewhat extreme example of ‘emulating girls’ seemed to have pushed all of the other boys away from doing so this year. And generally away from reaching out to interact with Mr. Potter, for that matter.

That wasn’t the only oddity in the year, though. Mr. Weasley was an odd set of contradictions, and disproved other things. Such as needing to understand the theory behind a spell before you could cast it silently, because his written work was horrendous. Yet he was almost as invested in silent casting as the group that had formed around Mr. Potter, and doing quite well at it. Which meant that if you looked at his practicals alone he was operating far above the norm, but if you looked at his written work he wasn’t likely to pass at all. Combined left him oddly average, if not for a large portion of the year all fighting over first place anyway.

The next few years were certainly going to be interesting, especially if the current first-year class passed any of this onto the incoming first-years in September. If the silent casting from the start trend continued then how they taught wanded subjects could change entirely in the next decade!

* * *

Harry, Susan, and Hannah found the common room unsealed in the morning and took that as a sign that they could go out to exercise. They seemed to be the only ones moving around, though when they got back to the castle they found Mrs. Norris pacing just inside the door. Harry got scoffs from the two girls when he crouched down and held his hand out, as the cat had never approached them before then.

To all three of their surprise, Mrs. Norris approached Harry to sniff his hand, and then rubbed her head against it. He took that as permission to pet her, and that was how Mr. Filch found them a few minutes later.

“Potter, Abbott, Bones,” Mr. Filch said. “Five points to Hufflepuff for each of you for not making a mess coming in from outside.”

“Thank you, sir,” the three chorused, largely on autopilot.

“Now would you mind telling me what you’ve done to Mrs. Norris so that I know if I need to _dock_ you points for it?”

Harry shrugged. “I held my hand out for her like I usually do when she comes close enough to try, and she approached me today.”

“Huh. That’s it?”

“We’re surprised it worked today,” Susan said. “I didn’t see him do anything different.”

They all remained silent for a moment as Harry continued to pet Mrs. Norris, but eventually Mr. Filch coughed. “Right, you three should get moving so that you’re not late for breakfast. Do let your housemates know that there will be an announcement about yesterday.”

Harry stood up, and Mrs. Norris looked up at him before darting over to Mr. Filch. “We will, sir. Thank you for letting us know.”

* * *

The breakfast announcement didn’t tell them much beyond that a hole in the wards had been ‘forgotten about’ and had been closed when discovered overnight. Why the hole was there in the first place and how it had been forgotten about were noticeably absent in the explanation, but a ‘more detailed evaluation of the wards’ was going to be undertaken in the near future to ensure that no other such holes existed.

Classes went on as normal, and the braiding club met in the afternoon. Questions were asked of Harry then, such as what the Headmaster’s office was like. Nobody pushed for details on what had been returned to him, and he only mentioned the wands and wedding rings. He felt that the invisibility cloak and mysterious parchments should be kept more private for now. Especially as he thought that admitting to having the invisibility cloak might be seen as bragging, since they likely weren’t that common. The parchments he just wanted time to figure out on his own, eventually.

Things remained calm for the next week or so. Everyone continued as they had been, with minor changes. The lack of pain in Harry’s no-longer-a-scar continued, no matter his proximity to Professor Quirrell. Harry was able to convince Mrs. Norris to let Susan pet her after a few days, but Hannah didn’t want to even make the attempt. Madam Bones let him know that seventeen people had been successfully charged with sending illegal posts to him, but as he wasn’t actually harmed he wasn’t entitled to anything from them. It was still nice to know that they’d gotten punished, of course.

Then, in the middle of November, Charms caught up to the unofficial lesson from the start of the year. Hufflepuff had ended up with Gryffindor this week, Potions for some reason being the only class that was always the same houses every time.

“Now then,” Professor Flitwick said, placing one of the three-lock mini-chests on the table. “Most of you, if not all, already know how to cast the locking and unlocking charms after finding that they may be needed at the start of term. If patterns hold, many of you will be able to cast both silently already. Mr. Weasley, would you care to demonstrate?”

A series of spells cast silently locked and unlocked the three locks, Weasley grinning as he succeeded. The professor clapped. “Good job Mr. Weasley, ten points to Gryffindor for your silent spells.”

They then got a lecture on what the spells actually _did_ , which was far more complicated than merely locking or unlocking something. For a basic lock they were apparently identical in function, determining what needed to happen to change the lock state and then manipulating the lock to do what was needed. The unlocking charm had the added function of attempting to clear basic locking magic as well, commonly used to prevent picking of locks from working, and the chests had runes that applied a basic magical lock when the second and third locks were engaged to test that they were successful with that aspect of the unlocking spell.

He then produced a different chest, painted in red, that had protections against all locking and unlocking charms. The runes dispelled the attempts to identify how the locks even worked. With those in place you couldn’t even trigger a basic thumbturn with the spells, and he challenged anyone in the room to unlock any of the three locks with magic after he demonstrated that they were all locked. Several others in the class tried while Harry considered what he’d learned while trying, and failing, to cast locking and unlocking charms wandlessly. Though he could probably handle a thumbturn now, as the locks at least wiggled. But there was another trick he’d figured out that wasn’t actually a locking or unlocking charm.

Harry raised his hand, and waited his turn. Two others were still in line before him, and then Professor Flitwick called on him. Not even pulling his wand out, he reached out with his hand and a moment later the thumbturn clicked open. Professor Flitwick looked between Harry and the chest, then lifted the now-unlocked lid.

“Mr. Potter,” he said as he closed and re-locked the compartment. “After I confirm that the runic protections are still functional I will want to see you do that again.”

It took a few seconds of casting for the professor to be happy with the state of the box, and then Harry unlocked the first compartment again. At that point most of the class was staring at Harry, and he just looked at them for a moment before focusing on the professor again.

“Mr. Potter,” Professor Flitwick finally said. “I find myself impressed that you’ve gotten a wandless unlocking charm to work despite runic protections, even on something as simple as a thumbturn. May I ask how you did it?”

Harry shrugged. “I cheated.”

There was a pause as the professor looked at the unlocked lock. “How, exactly, did you cheat?”

“I used a levitation charm to apply a rotational force to the thumbturn.”

Another moment of silence followed that, before the professor chuckled. “Fifteen points to Hufflepuff, Mr. Potter, for realizing that many problems have alternate solutions. I did, after all, only specify that you had to open one of the locks with _magic_ , not an unlocking charm.”

At the end of the class Professor Flitwick offered to loan three-lock chests to anyone who wished to borrow one to practice their locking and unlocking charms on. The Gryffindors who hadn’t already learned the two spells each took one, as did Harry so that he could hopefully figure out casting both spells wandlessly. He opted to give it a try as soon as he had the chest, and after three attempts the thumbturn _did_ fully unlock, so he was getting close.

* * *

It took an additional two weeks, but Harry finally got his locking and unlocking charms to work wandlessly. He wasn’t entirely sure what happened there though, as it didn’t work one attempt and then something just slotted into place in his head and they both worked flawlessly the next. Except that when he’d shown Professor Flitwick he was told that he hadn’t gotten the basic versions down at all, but a more complicated set that would work on a wider variety of locks and even doors and windows _without_ locks.

This was, according to the professor, to be expected. Wandless magic was generally more restricted, such as only being able to levitate books, or far more broad in its base applications, like Harry’s wandless ‘levitation charm’ that was actually closer to a combination of levitation, summoning, and banishing charms. Harry had been working with different locks in his testing, pushing himself beyond his magic just figuring out a _single_ lock, and had gotten a more broadly applicable effect as a result.

When the braiding club found out the next day they were less happy.

“Oh come _on_ ,” Parvati whined, throwing up her hands. “We’ve made no progress on summoning our wands to our hands and you’ve picked up locking and unlocking?”

Harry blinked as he processed that. “I didn’t know you were trying to summon your wands to your hands.”

“Of course we are,” Hermione said, giving him a clear ‘are you stupid’ look. “It’s the single most useful wandless trick you know.” She then turned to Parvati. “Of course, the intent was to figure it out and _surprise him with it_. But that’s out of the bag.”

“How are you working on it?”

“Most of us put our wand down on a table or desk in our dorm and try to pull it into our hand.”

“Have you learned the summoning charm with a wand yet?”

Susan pulled her wand out and summoned a book from her bag. “Obviously. But we can’t exactly summon our wand with our wand to practice.”

Harry grinned. “I practiced with sticks, pens, and pencils before I even _had_ a wand, because I’d made things float and occasionally come to me before. Unsharpened pencils and capped pens for safety, in case the angle was wrong when it reached my hand. Which it was, a lot. I also didn’t get it down for probably fourteen months? Maybe fifteen, and I had no way to cast a summoning charm on anything else with a wand to get a feel for what I was doing either.”

“Oh. How long did it take you to learn that, your hair color change charm, and whatever else you knew before you got your wand?”

“I worked on most of it at the same time, but it was basically almost a complete two years. Starting a couple of days after my ninth birthday.”

“Huh.”

Harry looked at the girls. “So, when did you even begin this project?”

Tracey rolled her eyes. “You spend enough time on a broom and _trying_ to connect to some of the boys to give us plenty of time to work when you’re not around. Though now I wonder what you’re going to go for next, disapparition?”

“Er, no,” he said, thinking that admitting he could already do that would be a bad idea right now. “I was thinking that I’d attempt the mending charm, because I know I’ve done that before but hadn’t been able to get it to work intentionally before I got my letter.”

“I’d think that a wandless _finite_ would be more useful,” Lisa noted.

Harry rolled his eyes, ran his hand over his hair to turn it blond, then focused for a moment to cancel the charm. “I already figured out that changing my hair color back was a more general spell ending effect, and it took maybe three days to be able to cast it right next to my skin. I do still have to gesture to cast it any further than approximately three inches, but I can.”

Isobel scowled. “Dammit Harry, how are we supposed to catch up when you’ve got two years on us?”

Mandy hit the girl lightly on the back of the head. “It isn’t _his_ fault that the entire global magical society makes casual casting without a wand seem nearly impossible.”

“But he makes it look so _easy!_ It isn’t fair!”

“Tell that to the sixth years,” Susan countered. “The ones that whine that _we_ make casting silently look easy. A few of them keep saying that they hope we have a horrible time learning point casting, making me wonder if we should be trying harder to get that working as well.”

“That’s supposed to come naturally over time if you’re using a spell often enough,” Hermione argued. “You get used to the spell, you get sloppy with the movements, and eventually you aren’t doing the wand movements at all unless you need incredible precision. It should actually come _easier_ for us, probably before our OWLs for the spells we learn up through third year, because not using the incantation for a spell is the first step to not paying full attention to what you’re doing when casting it.”

There was a moment of silence in the room before Lily raised her hand. “I vote we _don’t_ tell the older students that we’re getting that much of a head start on things we’d normally be doing in our last couple of years.”

“What about those in our year that aren’t bothering with the silent casting bit?” Sophie asked.

“They had their chance, if they didn’t figure it out then it sucks to be them but isn’t our fault?”

“Works for me.”

* * *

It took Harry a week to determine that he had a problem with learning the mending spell, and that was a lack of things to mend. He had very little he was willing to damage of his own available, the spell was less effective on magical items _in general_ , and he probably needed a _lot_ of broken items to work with. Perhaps he needed to put that off until he could visit a junk shop over the Christmas holidays?

Instead he found himself finally looking at the two mystery parchments. He started with the older one, removing the note stuck to it and unfolding it.

**This is James’s copy of the original, snuck out of his bag while he was sleeping in. It’s incomplete and lacking in a couple of features we worked out how to implement in mine, but works fine for most purposes.**

**To activate it, touch your wand to it and say “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” and to deactivate it do the same but say “Mischief managed”.**

That seemed incredibly simple, and made no sense for why the Headmaster had been unable to use it. Pulling his wand out, Harry touched it to the map. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

A small blot of ink came from where Harry’s wand had touched, forming into words on the parchment a moment later.

**Moony: I do believe that someone got this away from the Headmaster.**

**Padfoot: I don’t know. Is the Headmaster watching?**

**Prongs: Good question.**

A small circle appeared in the corner of the parchment, with a dot that said ‘Harry Potter’.

**Wormtail: Looks like he’s alone.**

**Prongs: Good enough for me. Any objections?**

**Moony: Nope.**

**Padfoot: Nope.**

**Wormtail: Not from me.**

**Prongs: Well then, budding prankster, enjoy!**

The ink suddenly exploded into thin lines that spread everywhere, combining and crisscrossing across the parchment. Green words came into existence a moment later.

**Messrs. Prongs, Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail  
Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers  
are proud to present  
The Marauder’s Map**

And it was indeed a map, one of the entire school. With little dots all over it, labeled with the names of people. One that apparently had known that the Headmaster was the one trying to activate it, and had refused to activate for him?

Looking over the map, he could see that most students were in their houses, which made sense as it was approaching curfew. But there were some people still in the halls, such as Mr. Filch and Mrs. Norris. Fred and George Weasley were in an out of the way area of the castle, in an area that Harry was fairly certain had nothing of interest otherwise, and there were two names in what had to be a broom closet near the Ravenclaw common room entrance.

Harry did his best to ignore that for now.

There was also a ‘Fluffy’ in the third floor corridor, probably someone’s pet exploring where students weren’t supposed to be, and a ‘Ugnaught’ in a seemingly cut off area of the dungeons. Looking around for the teachers, he determined that most of them were in their offices right now, though Professor Quirrell was in his quarters. Literally on top of or just underneath a ‘Tom Riddle’.

Harry did his best to ignore _that_ too.

A tap of his wand and a “mischief managed” had the map going back to blank parchment. He then activated it again, not getting the little conversation he’d gotten the first time. So it was likely that it had locked down in some way when the Headmaster tried to use it, and once a student activated it things went back to normal. Which was interesting, and might be what happened with the other one as well.

He left the map active, then picked up the other parchment and removed its note.

**This is the copy that James and I made, an improvement on the original in many ways, even if he won’t tell me what the final steps were.**

**To be able to see this one you have to use the stupid activation phrase once: “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good” - James _insists_ that he couldn’t change that bit, but I have my doubts. But you don’t need your wand, and once it knows you it can be turned on and off by pushing a little magic into it, so you never need the stupid phrase again.**

Raising an eyebrow, Harry looked at the parchment. Shrugging, he decided to give it a shot. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

The parchment seemed to glow for a moment, before words appeared on it.

**Prongs: How dare you try to use Flos’s property without permission!**

**Flos: How do you know they don’t have permission?**

**Prongs: You’re not holding the map while they try to key themselves in.**

**Flos: Ah. You never were willing to tell me everything about the construction.**

**Prongs: Gotta keep _some_ secrets.**

**Flos: Yet, they’ve gotten this far. What does that mean?**

**Prongs: ...you have a point. There _are_ some contingencies...**

**Flos: More importantly, we should probably know who we’re dealing with and why they feel they are justified in their attempted use of this.**

**Prongs: Oh, all right. Hey you, trying to use Flos’s property! State your name and claim!**

Harry stared at the parchment for a moment, idly thinking that Prongs must be a codename for his father due to being on both parchments. Which probably made Flos a codename for his mother?

**Well? Are you still there?**

Right, apparently it wouldn’t wait forever. “I’m Harry Potter, orphaned son and only child of Lily and James Potter.”

Nothing happened for nearly ten seconds, and then without fanfare a circle appeared in the corner of the parchment. Like the other one, this one had a dot labeled ‘Harry Potter’. Unlike the other one, a box then appeared around the name and expanded to show more information.

**Harry James Potter  
Male - Hufflepuff - Year 1  
Son of James Potter (Prongs) (Deceased)  
Son of Lily Evans (Flos) (Deceased)**

There was a moment where nothing happened, before the previous ‘discussion’ cleared.

**Prongs: HUFFLEPUFF!?!?!**

**Flos: What’s wrong with Hufflepuff?**

**Prongs: Shouldn’t our child be in Gryffindor?**

**Flos: You care more about where our child was sorted than the fact that _we likely died before he even made it to Hogwarts?_**

**Prongs: Crap. We don’t even have faces and I can tell that you’re giving me _that_ look. Okay son, you get a pass, because we have nowhere to store memories once you’re keyed in and I don’t want either of us to remember this discussion.**

**Flos: Don’t you _dar–_**

The parchment abruptly cleared for a moment, followed by ink flowing out from where he was still holding it to form a very similar result to the other parchment.

**Madam Flos  
Unparalleled Beauty and Defender of Justice  
with Assistance from Mister Prongs  
is proud to present  
THE MARAUDER’S MAP  
Version 2 - Head Girl’s Edition**

He pushed magic into it and it went back to being clear, then pushed magic in again and it went back to being a map. Then he deactivated it and used the activation phrase, only for the map to just appear. Apparently he was now authorized and the...echoes, perhaps, of his parents weren’t going to show up again. Which was a disappointment, but he suspected that there was nothing he would be able to do about it.

Comparing the new map to the old to distract himself, Harry found that this one showed a male/female symbol next to each name, and students appeared to have a G, H, R, or S with a number next to their male/female symbol. Touching his name, the information box with his full name, gender, house, and year appeared, but not the ‘son of’ information. Curious, he touched ‘Fluffy’ (who was apparently male) to see what other information would appear for that, but only got ‘Cerberus’. Similarly, ‘Ugnaught’ showed ‘Troll’.

Additional examination showed that there were some symbols on the side of this map that didn’t exist on the other one. A magnifying glass, a squiggly arrow, and a shield or crest of some kind. Harry tapped the magnifying glass and a little text box appeared, saying ‘state name’. Thinking for a moment, he decided that he might as well try it. “Mr. Filch.”

There was a pause, and then the box changed to ‘Did you mean: Argus Filch (caretaker)’. Harry tapped that, and then a circle animated where Mr. Filch was. That seemed useful, especially if he was looking for someone specific, and next he hit the little squiggly arrow. That caused glowing lines to appear on the map, starting at Harry and drawing across the map to Mr. Filch. Apparently that was ‘tell me how to get to...’ or something like that. There was also a glowing arrow in the corner pointing in the direction he needed to go to follow the path, or at least he assumed that was what it was doing. Tapping the squiggly arrow again turned the glowing lines and arrow off.

Tapping the shield or crest caused a box with six entries to appear. Each of the house crests was there in color with the house name under it, the Hogwarts crest was in color with ‘Staff’ under it, and then there was a purple shield with ‘Visitors’ under it. Tapping each of them changed them between color and greyed out, and when any one of them was greyed out the dots likely associated with that group vanished from the map.

He spent another ten minutes comparing the two maps, spotting various passages only showing on the ‘Version 2’ map. But then he realized that there were also two other, identical indicators on that one. It was a stylized uppercase ‘M’, one right next to him and the other between the Weasley twins. Curious, Harry picked up the map and walked over to his bed, finding that the ‘M’ stayed put. Walking back to the desk, he picked up the other map and walked to his bed, and the ‘M’ followed him.

Tapping the older map with his wand, he said ‘mischief managed’ and the uppercase ‘M’ next to him changed to a lowercase ‘m’. Which seemed to indicate that the ‘Version 2’ map could track the ‘Version 1’ maps, tell when they were activated, and that the Weasley twins had a copy of their own. Harry then tapped the ‘m’ next to him, and a little info box popped up stating ‘Prongs, Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail`. Tapping the ‘M’ between the Weasley twins brought up ‘Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs’ instead.

The other difference was that the one by the twins also had what looked like a button under it now, with ‘Mischief Managed’ written inside of it. Harry couldn’t resist and tapped it, only to have the uppercase ‘M’ change into a lowercase ‘m’ and the button vanish. A few seconds later it returned to being an uppercase ‘M’ and the button returned, making him think that one of the twins had reactivated the map they had.

It was too late in the day to do so now, but in the near future the Weasley twins were going to get a visit. There was a chance that they knew more about who Moony, Padfoot, and Wormtail were, and Harry was curious. Maybe they were family to one of the three and got their map that way?

* * *

The next morning Harry wrote a quick letter to the Headmaster, to tell him that the parchments were maps of the school that were probably set to not work for either him specifically or staff in general. Harry provided no real details beyond that, figuring that his father hadn’t wanted the Headmaster to know what they were capable of if the maps were protected in that manner. Harry planned to just walk up to the staff table to deliver the letter, but Hedwig knew that there was a letter to be delivered and showed up to take it. Even if she was just flying across the Great Hall, as the Headmaster had arrived just after Hedwig had.

The Headmaster took the letter from Hedwig, read it, and then produced a quill and wrote on the back of it. That was given back to Hedwig, who flew back over to Harry. A number of students and a couple of the staff watched this with a mixture of curiosity and amusement, Hedwig being a bit more obvious than the other owls as she flew back and forth. The Headmaster’s response was basically an admission that he knew that there was more to the parchments than mere maps, but wasn’t going to be pushy ‘when it came to family heirlooms’.

“What’s that all about?” Susan asked.

“I’ll probably show everyone when we meet up later,” Harry answered, which she accepted easily enough. The other members of the braiding club around them did as well. The boys and older students looked less accepting of not finding out more, but nobody pushed for more details.

Classes served as a distraction from thinking about the maps, though there were a couple of points during the day where Harry considered the best way to approach the Weasley twins. He knew incredibly little about them though, so being blunt might be the best option. Then again, approaching them to ask if they were up to no good could work too, but wouldn’t work quite as well if they didn’t answer the correct way. Of course, the potential reaction from them if they _did_ answer the right way might be worth the attempt.

After classes the braiding club initially met in the library to get homework out of the way. They were in the habit of doing so whenever they had two feet or less to write in total a given day so that they wouldn’t have to worry about assignments later. They finished up with plenty of time before dinner and relocated to the unofficial club room so that they could make noise without annoying Madam Pince.

“So what were you owling the Headmaster about at breakfast?” Susan asked.

“These,” Harry answered, pulling both maps out of his robe pocket.

“Those had better be enchanted or something like that,” Hermione said, looking at the two. “Because owling the Headmaster about blank parchment sounds like a lacklustre prank.”

“Of course they’re enchanted,” Harry said, placing his hand on his mother’s copy and activating it. “See?”

The girls crowded around the table to stare at the map, before Tracey turned to glare at Harry. “So what, exactly, are we supposed to be seeing?”

He looked down at the map, then at the girls. “Can’t you see the map that drew itself on the parchment?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Huh.” Harry then popped his wand into his hand and touched it to his father’s map. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” The ink spread from where his wand was touching the map, and the girls could obviously see it. While they stared at that map he picked up his mother’s, which remained perfectly visible to him. Looking over it, he saw that the Weasley twins were in the Gryffindor common room right now, and were not easily approached.

“So where did you get this?” Mandy asked.

“The Headmaster was given both of them by my mother,” Harry answered as most of the girls turned to look at him. “Though he couldn’t make them work, even with the instructions he was given. He passed them to me.”

“Where did _she_ get them?” Hermione asked.

“She took that one from my father’s things. This one was her copy, but it’s a newer one she and my father made and apparently has better security if I’m the only one that can see the map on it.”

They spent the rest of the time before dinner examining the maps. Or rather, Harry watched the girls examine his father’s map while occasionally looking at his mother’s to see what they were likely talking about seeing on the other one.


	11. Year 1 - Chapter 10

Pansy hid her scowl as ‘the girls’ entered the Great Hall for dinner. They split up mostly to their own house tables today, but nobody would bat an eye if they’d plopped down at the Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw table as a multi-house group. Nor did anyone see anything wrong with ‘the girls’ containing the half-blood-who-lived. Which showed just how badly the loyal Purebloods had been outplayed.

Potter had come across the perfect way to be ignored and underestimated, and Draco was probably the first one to have noticed it. Dressing in what were supposedly his mother’s clothing should’ve been political suicide, but he’d turned it around into an early power base. Then when they’d ‘leaked’ the truth to Skeeter he’d let things simmer _just_ long enough before ruthlessly using his orphan status to regain all the ground he’d lost three times over. In the process he’d taken Skeeter herself out of the picture and gotten all of the Weasley children to respect him, something that the older Slytherins claimed was nearly impossible.

It was infuriating in how _effective_ it was, and they were so _open_ about things. The top seventeen students in their year were all part of Potter’s group, across all four houses, all doing things that shouldn’t be possible for first-years. And you couldn’t even trust that it was _only_ the girls in his group, because Weasley and Zabini were both pulling some of the same tricks. Zabini hid it better, but probably only because nobody would believe that Weasley _wasn’t_ secretly working with Potter. Not after the boy’s third-year brothers had made an award of some kind for the boy who looked like a girl.

The entire loyal Pureblood side had been sidelined, without enough backing to _do_ anything. And even if they did, doing it against Potter right now would see them coming out as looking weak no matter what happened. Either they won as was their right and were picking on the poor orphan boy or Potter was ready for them and they lost against the boy who wears his mother’s clothing.

Potter was a Slytherin in Puff clothing, and was beating them at their own game.

* * *

After dinner Harry broke from his normal patterns and headed out into the castle on his own. He had his mother’s map out and was following its directions to get to the place he’d seen the twins in the night before. Luckily he could tell the map to get him to places instead of just to people, though he did need to figure out what was with the nine paths leading _off_ of the map at some point.

The trip from the Hufflepuff common room to the room that the twins appeared to have commandeered took far less time than it rightfully should’ve. That a secret passage led directly into the room from halfway across the castle probably helped, and the opening instructions the map had provided were incredibly useful. As soon as he’d exited into the room it was immediately obvious that it was an old classroom now being used quite heavily as a workshop. Desks had been pushed up against the walls to form workbenches full of things obviously in progress, shelves held collections of materials and possibly-completed items, and the blackboard had impossible to decipher notes scrawled all over it.

Harry checked the two non-secret doors in the room and found that one led to a professor’s quarters that looked like it was slept in on occasion. The other led out into the hall, but was hidden behind a tapestry. That one locked behind him and didn’t react to wanded or wandless unlocking charms, so he looked at the map to see if the twins were on their way. It took a moment to determine that they probably were, though Fred didn’t have their map active. Shrugging, Harry sat down against the wall opposite the hidden door to wait.

Watching his map, he saw the twins duck into a secret passage that jumped across several halls before they activated their map. Once they had they came to a halt, likely examining the map for whatever reason. After nearly ten minutes they got moving again, and at that point it only took them a couple of minutes to reach the hallway he was in. Though they stopped just short of coming out into the hallway, waited a couple more minutes, then deactivated their map.

Harry looked up in the direction they were coming from as they entered the hallway, and they seemed to be acting as though they’d not noticed that he was there. It was only as they came within twenty feet of him that they stopped. Glancing down at his map, he saw that Fred was on his right and George was on his left.

“Hello there Sender of Howlers,” George greeted. “Fancy seeing you out this way.”

“Did you happen to get lost?” Fred asked.

“No Fred,” Harry replied. “I wanted to talk to you two and figured that this was a decent place to do so.”

The twins shared a confused and slightly worried look. George then looked at Harry, raising an eyebrow. “Here?”

“Yes, here.”

“Why?” Fred asked.

“Well, I assumed that you’d find an out of the way place in the castle in order to get up to no good.” Harry then stared at them. “You _are_ up to no good, aren’t you?”

“We’re _always_...” Fred started.

“...up to no good!” George finished.

“Though that still leaves questions.”

“Like why _here_ , of all out of the way places?”

Harry grinned. “Do you _solemnly swear_ that you are up to no good?”

The twins stood there gaping at him for a solid minute, before Fred’s eyes dropped down to stare at the parchment Harry was holding. He elbowed his brother and gestured, and George looked down as well.

“But _we_ have the map,” George whispered, sounding confused.

“There were four of them,” Harry answered the unasked question. “Did you expect them to share a single map when they knew how to make them?”

The twins shared another look, then shook their heads before turning back to Harry and bowing.

“Wonderful show,” Fred said.

“Impeccable logic,” George continued.

“Can’t find any fault in it.”

“And you obviously saw us working here.”

“Seeking us out where we work.”

“You have all the signs of a prankster.”

“Pranked the whole wizarding world with your look.”

“Then became a Puff.”

“Nobody expects trouble from a Puff.”

“But that does make us wonder.”

“How you knew _we_ had a map.”

“And where you happened to get one of your own?”

Harry blinked as they finally stopped the back and forth. “I inherited mine.”

“Inherited?” the twins chorused.

“My father was Prongs, and I have his personal copy.” And his mother’s copy, which was the one he was holding, but he was already half-regretting telling the braiding club about it. Even if he’d learned important things about it in the process. Telling these two largely-unknowns seemed like a definite bad idea. “I was hoping that you could tell me about Moony, Padfoot, or Wormtail. They had to be my father’s friends if he worked with them on the map.”

The twins looked at each other and slumped in unison. George waved Fred to the hidden door, apparently a sign to pull out a wand and start casting at it, before turning to Harry. “Sorry, we nabbed our copy from Filch’s office. Never even considered that there should be more than one copy of the map before now.”

“Come into our workshop and we’ll share what little we have figured out though,” Fred said.

“Just don’t touch anything.”

“I decided that was a good idea when I passed through,” Harry said. “I hope the blackboard has some kind of protection charm on it though, otherwise I pity the professors trying to read your handwriting.”

Fred stopped with the door partially open, turning to stare at Harry. George also seemed to be staring at him, but the twins shared a look before Fred snorted and continued into the room. “Of course the son of Prongs completely ignored our meagre protections.”

“He hasn’t told us how he knew we had a copy of the map either,” George noted.

“Probably a Marauder secret that we have to earn the right to know.”

“Very true. We’ll just have to ensure that we prove ourselves worthy.”

Harry deactivated his mother’s map and slipped it into his robes for the time being as the twins collected three chairs and dug a box out from under one of the workbench desks.

“So you know that the Marauders exist,” Fred said. “You know the power of the map and what it can teach you.”

“But you don’t know the full story of what they accomplished,” George continued, tapping the box. “This box contains records taken from Filch’s office.”

“Anonymized, sadly.”

“That’s automatic a year or two after you graduate.”

“Made it impossible to figure out when the Marauders attended.”

“Since Filch kept their files together with the map.”

“And the only dates were their year at the time.”

George opened the box and pulled out several sheets of parchment. “But the pranks they played were incredible.”

“If, er, immature, especially early on.”

“We’ve opted to focus on their last couple of years for inspiration.”

“They sound a bit too much like bullies for our tastes in the first three to four years.”

“Bill...”

“...our eldest brother...”

“...and our father taught us a bit about that.”

“Pranking is an art.”

“You can use it to retaliate against wrongs...”

“...but should never go overboard in doing so.”

“And always ensure that it isn’t permanent.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at that. “Isn’t permanent?”

Fred shivered. “We, er, _might_ have attempted to trick someone into an unbreakable vow.”

“Never do that,” George added.

“That was a big lesson.”

“Then Bill found out about something we were going to use without any plans for an antidote.”

“Slipped it into our own food.”

“It worked wonderfully.”

“Took three months of work before we could taste anything other than dragon dung when eating.”

George handed over the parchments he’d pulled out of the box. “These are a few of the pranks we’re hoping to top some day.”

Harry took the parchments and skimmed them. Turning a classroom into a desert in the fifteen minutes between classes, fireworks that roamed the halls for a few hours despite the best efforts of the staff, coloring the hair of the teachers based on what house they’d been in when they’d been students, and all of the tableware in the Great Hall doing a musical song and dance routine. The latter apparently as an exit trick when they graduated.

“I have no clue where to begin on some of that,” Harry admitted when he was done.

“We’ve got ideas,” George said.

“Can’t copy them directly,” Fred continued.

“But we can go along the same lines.”

“And we’ve got plans for things we can sell too.”

“The dragon dung tongue works great for losing weight.”

“And we seem to have a knack for edibles.”

“Just need to make sure that they’re temporary or easily undone.”

The three of them would chat about various things until it was nearly curfew, going their separate ways then so as to not get in trouble.

* * *

To the surprise of nobody, the Weasley twins had shown up to breakfast with hair down to their mid-backs a few days later. It was less jarring than the day their hair had been glowing neon orange, and a lot of people didn’t even notice at first. The braiding club was the most significantly affected, as the twins showed up at their afternoon gathering and asked for help with their hair. Which, if cut, grew right back out to the full length in a manner that Madam Pomfrey was clueless about.

The two took to learning braiding their hair with completely inappropriate gusto, annoyed the group significantly, and then helped them get through their homework faster than usual to make up for the initial time lost. They continued to show up every couple of days, and in the middle of December the unofficial clubroom mysteriously obtained a bookshelf of reference books, a sign in the hallway, and a cabinet that kept things cold that seemed to be regularly filled with drinks. Nobody said anything when their hair mysteriously returned to a more normal length and they still showed up to gatherings. When they weren’t in detention for spelling snowballs to bounce off of the back of Professor Quirrell’s turban, anyway.

After the first snowfall of the year, or more specifically the first time Harry, Susan, and Hannah had tried to exercise on the snow-covered grounds, Harry had found a book that described warming and drying charms. His new project was to get them down wandlessly, because they were far too useful this time of year. He’d get back to the mending charm when he had enough damaged items to do things properly.

Very little of interest happened otherwise, until it was time for the Christmas holidays. Or the Yule holidays, for the magicals that didn’t celebrate Christmas as such. The Weasley twins were the only braiding club ‘members’ not going home for the break, something about their parents taking their sister to see one of their already-graduated brothers and there not being enough room for the four still at Hogwarts to join them.

Harry had traded phone numbers with those members of the club who had phones, helped explain what phones were to those who didn’t, and agreed that Hedwig could show up to help with getting purchased gifts moved around if she wanted to. Not that he would be able to stop her. But the most interesting portion of things was just after they’d boarded the train, discussing the reminders about not using magic outside of school that they’d received at breakfast.

Their compartment had ended up holding Harry, Susan, Hannah, Padma, Parvati, and Hermione. Eventually they might learn space expansion charms and be able to fit seventeen people in one compartment, but not yet, so they’d spread out between three neighboring compartments.

“I’d forgotten about this nonsense,” Hermione whined, waving the ‘no using magic outside of school’ reminder. “How am I supposed to show my parents what I’ve learned?”

“Visit Diagon Alley,” Harry answered, only for the others in the compartment to stare at him. “What?”

“How would that help?” Susan asked, obviously curious.

“The trace automatically negates itself if an adult’s wand is nearby. You could also see if you could find a used wand in a store and keep it on the mantle or something, but you’d need to never cast through it yourself for that to work.”

“So those living with magical adults can cast at home, but muggleborn can’t?”

“That’s the impression that I got, yes.”

Hermione frowned. “And you’ve got that wonderful display with two wands from adults in it to cancel out notifications.”

“That won’t actually help. Professor Snape let me know that the Headmaster got the Ministry and the ICW to release their claims on my parents’ wands, so they no longer participate in the trace detection process.”

The looks from the other five had Harry sighing before he explained what he knew about how the trace worked. That led to a ten minute rant on Hermione’s part, and how the ‘reasonable’ restriction was anything but with how it was implemented.

“I don’t think you’re looking at it correctly,” Padma finally said, getting a glare from Hermione. “What? This is an international thing, and most of the rules surrounding it are probably to ensure that you can’t slip the net more than anything else. Even Harry’s parents’ wands being ‘released’ from the net was likely done to ensure that they wouldn’t hide him casting in front of muggles not in the know.”

“And if they hadn’t then the Headmaster would probably have had Harry cast something through the wands,” Susan added. “Probably with some excuse such as seeing if they’d work well for him as a backup in the future, but really to reset the last caster information so that his spells wouldn’t be suppressed by the trace.”

“Oooh,” Hermione said, her face lighting up as she spun to look at Harry. “You could leave your wand at home and use one of your parents’ wands to practice elsewhere!”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I should be fine at home anyway.” It was only after he’d said it that he realized that he probably shouldn’t have, as the five girls all turned to look at him.

“ _How_ will you be fine at home?” Parvati asked.

“Er, I _might_ have paid full price for my wand, so the trace doesn’t work right on it?”

Hermione looked ready to explode into another rant. “So for a few knuts more you don’t have to worry about the trace?”

“More like over twenty galleons more.” That had all five of the girls flinching back in shock, and Harry shrugged. “I think the trace only works if the price is split equally, so the full price is at least three times what the wandmaker originally asks for.”

“That sounds far more reasonable than I was expecting,” Hermione finally admitted. “But only because it serves as a good way to make wands more affordable while supporting the law, and I know my parents wouldn’t have gone for it. But how did you know to pay full price?”

“Professor Snape insisted when he found out that I could afford it, though I think it might’ve been because I may have a greater need to protect myself from those who followed the Dark Lord. I only went along with it at first because I thought that the subsidizing was only a fund to make wands cheaper. Me not pulling from it would only help others, right? He explained the rest afterwards.”

By silent agreement, they shifted to discussing holiday plans instead. Depending on how things went, Harry might try to visit the others. Some of that would depend on how things were going at Privet Drive and if excuses could be made that wouldn’t raise questions, given that Aunt Marge _was_ going to be spending some of the holiday there.

* * *

The platform at King’s Cross was a madhouse, but Harry eventually escaped into the non-magical station. There he found Uncle Vernon waiting for him, leaning against the wall while reading the paper. A few minutes later Hermione introduced Harry and his uncle to her parents briefly when they ended up near each other in the car park, but neither group wanted to hang around in the light snow.

“So that was one of your classmates,” Uncle Vernon said once they’d entered traffic.

“Yes,” Harry answered.

“She seemed...normal enough. Not spouting off about...crazy things.”

“Things you don’t understand?”

“Yeah.”

“How many people in the station would’ve had any clue what you were talking about if you started talking about drills?”

“Don’t you start on that now. Your aunt uses it far too often.”

Harry grinned. “She asked me to remind you of that in her last letter.”

“Bah.”

They sat in silence for a bit, barring a few times that Uncle Vernon grumbled about the traffic. But as they approached Little Whinging he sighed. “So, boy, my sister arrived early. Showed up this morning.”

Harry frowned. “Oh.”

“She brought her dog, and has already complained about the lock on your door keeping her out. Thinks that you don’t deserve privacy or something.”

“The lock on my door?”

“I thought it prudent to install a deadbolt when she confirmed that she’d be visiting, given your pet and school supplies. Three of the four keys are locked inside the room right now, and the last is on my keychain. I’ll let you in when we get home and then you’ll be responsible for keeping a key on you. You get to decide if anyone other than me gets a key. I also replaced the door itself with a stronger one that has a peephole, though that’s mostly because I botched the first attempt at installing the deadbolt and one of the lads at the office gave me a spare door for free.”

Harry was surprised that they’d thought of that, but was grateful that he’d not have to worry about his things being gone through. “Thank you for thinking of that.”

“You’re welcome, but it’s more to keep from accidentally revealing things to my sister than anything else. Do try to keep all of that in your room whenever possible.”

“I’ll do my best.”

They arrived home a couple minutes later and Uncle Vernon helped bring the trunk upstairs, though only after a quick chat with Aunt Petunia. Luckily they didn’t have to worry about an owl cage, as Hedwig had been sent off with a letter for Mr. Ollivander the day before. Aunt Marge was waiting in the hallway when they finally made it up there, tapping her foot in annoyance. Ripper was with her, but took one look at Harry and scampered off into the guest bedroom. She watched as Uncle Vernon unlocked the door, then slipped in and tried to grab one of the keys from the desk as soon as Harry’s trunk was in the room.

“What are you doing,” Uncle Vernon asked his sister as he grabbed her hand.

“You’ve kept me out of this room long enough,” she answered. “And I don’t trust your freak of a nephew to not take my things and hide them in here.”

“You are a _guest_ in this house and are not entitled to full access to it. I also trust my nephew more than I trust you right now, as Harry couldn’t have rummaged through Petunia’s things before we returned. Harry, please take the three keys and do with them as you will.”

Harry did so while Uncle Vernon dragged his sister out of the room. One key went straight onto his keyring. The other two he locked in his trunk for now. He did his best to not enjoy Aunt Marge being yelled at by Uncle Vernon downstairs, instead doing a quick inspection of the room. Sighing, he walked out of it, locking the door, and then headed downstairs to collect some supplies to clean with. There was far too much dust and even some wood shavings that needed cleaning up, indicating that the door had been locked after being installed instead of after Aunt Petunia made it in there with a vacuum.

* * *

The next morning started with Harry finally getting around to playing with the magic concealer. He’d put it off, not feeling a need to ‘hide’ in school, but finally read through the book on it. Luckily for him, the ‘how to hide a skin blemish’ instructions were _far_ easier than the ‘how to hide a scar’ instructions. It only took him half an hour to get it right, and he couldn’t feel the makeup at all when he was done. His hair was then done up in pigtails, a style he rarely used at school.

After that he’d made sure that he had everything he needed for a trip to Diagon Alley in his backpack. It was empty of things he shouldn’t need for the trip, only holding his purse, glasses case, and contacts case. He’d swap out his glasses for contacts set to blue in the car, as well as change his hair to a dirty blond color, to further reduce the chances of being identified.

He only realized that he’d used the locking charm to lock his door after he’d done it, but decided to leave it for now. It wasn’t like anyone had seen him do it, and only Aunt Marge was a concern there in the first place. Still, he double-checked the door once just to be sure before heading downstairs. Uncle Vernon was going to drop him off at the Leaky Cauldron before going to get Dudley from Smeltings, as Aunt Petunia refused to leave Aunt Marge alone in the house.

Ripper whimpered and ducked under the table when Harry entered the kitchen, Aunt Marge scowling at Harry at the same time, and Aunt Petunia looked him over. She even lifted his bangs and nodded her approval of his work there. “Good job.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Marge spat. “He’s a freak and you know it. Covering up his scar doesn’t change that he’ll never amount to anything. Nobody will ever trust a deviant boy like him with anything of importance.”

“I suppose you’re talking from personal experience?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I believe that Vernon made his view very clear yesterday.”

“That was merely a misunderstanding blown entirely out of proportion.”

“Now Harry,” Aunt Petunia said, gently turning him around. “Vernon should nearly be done with checking that tire that he was concerned with, so you should get going. Stay on your best behavior, okay?”

“Yes Aunt Petunia,” Harry replied, happy to be able to leave Aunt Marge’s presence.

* * *

Thanks to Uncle Vernon wanting to get to Smeltings early, expecting Dudley to have barely started packing, Harry arrived at Diagon Alley not long after shops had opened. This left the place feeling somewhat deserted, and he hoped to get most of his shopping done before the crowds arrived. To start with, he headed for Ollivander’s, hoping that Hedwig had found him yesterday.

Arriving at the wandmaker’s shop, Harry found that the sign indicated that Mr. Ollivander was in. He headed inside, finding that the shop looked far cleaner and was better lit than it had been on his visit to purchase his wand. It was also more interesting, as he could see more details, such as what looked to be runes barely visible along the edges of the shelves. He had no clue what they did, but their existence was interesting.

Turning around, Harry beamed at Mr. Ollivander coming up behind him. “Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning Mr. Potter,” the wandmaker replied. “Very good work on your disguise today.”

“Thank you, sir. Though it didn’t seem to fool you.”

“You warned me you were coming, I’d recognize your wand anywhere, and you’re one of four people in the British Isles that I can’t seem to sneak up on in my own store. Though something is odd about your wand’s connection to you. How is it that you’ve won its allegiance in battle without ever having _lost_ it?”

Harry frowned. “I don’t understand it myself, but it happened when my scar was healed. Knocked me out in the process, and Madam Pomfrey said something about my wand connection having changed as well. Actually, that does remind me, _could_ my wand have originally chosen me for my scar?”

“That is an intriguing question, Mr. Potter, and given that its brother originally _gave_ you the scar it is certainly possible. Weirder things have happened with wands. Why, one girl a few years back returned to me after a few months because her wand had suddenly stopped responding to her, and we eventually found that it was because she’d changed brands of nail polish. Though that was because her wand disliked the new brand, not that it had chosen the old one.”

Well, that sounded like they’d never know for sure. “I see.”

“I doubt you do, but that isn’t why you’re here. Thanks to your owl, and she’s quite beautiful, I had time to visit my supplier for holsters. Though I am curious why you need over seventy.”

“Most of my friends at school are keeping their wands in their pockets, so I figured that they’d make good Christmas gifts. Or Yule gifts, maybe?”

“And you wish to ensure that they each have one of each wearing style. Very sensible of you, as far too many people never consider getting one in the first place. That makes me feel better about giving you the bulk discount as well, though you’ll be getting one set more than you asked for as they come in boxes of twenty-five each.”

“Having an extra set shouldn’t be a problem. In the worst case I hold onto them until I find someone who needs them.”

“Indeed, Mr. Potter, and I’m sure that your friends’ wands will be grateful for your thoughtfulness.” He placed three boxes on the counter, then paused and looked up at Harry. “Actually, Mr. Potter, if you have time I think I would like to test your theory.”

“What?”

“That your current wand chose your scar and not you. There is no law that states one must carry only a single wand, would you allow me to see if another will choose you now that your scar is no longer a factor?”

Harry considered that for a moment, then shrugged. “I should have plenty of time, and I can afford another wand, so why not.”

“Very good. Now then, let’s see...”

* * *

It had taken half an hour, but Ollivander was shocked and pleased when an alder and unicorn hair wand had practically jumped off of the shelf. Apparently he’d normally never consider an alder wand for a student, as they disliked verbal casting. Finding out that Harry and many of his friends were doing their best to learn all of their spells nonverbally had the wandmaker nodding.

Galleons exchanged hands, including the full twenty-one galleons for the wand. The three packs of wand holsters were stored in Harry’s backpack, minus a single holster he extracted to use immediately for the new wand, and he left to continue his shopping. The Patil twins and Susan all had holsters already, so he needed to find something else for them, and then he also needed to see about his family. Their gifts were going to need to be subtle on the magic front or he’d need to make another shopping trip for things that weren’t magical so long as Aunt Marge was around.

A little wandering brought him to one of the second-hand stores, where he found several interesting items. A hand mirror that could be spun around to show the back of your head, a bracelet that was designed to hold an emergency makeup supply, a normal-looking leather wallet that was enchanted with anti-theft charms that were ‘muggle safe’, and a portable owl window insert for non-magical homes. He picked them all up, as they were all in his intended price range, and mentally crossed Susan, Parvati, and Uncle Vernon off of his shopping list. The owl window insert was the exception, he deemed that just too useful to not get and Hedwig would certainly appreciate it.

Getting a proper gift for Hedwig was easy enough as a next stop, and he found that the owl emporium had a harness with protective enchantments for owls intended to keep them more comfortable in varying weather conditions and safe from a number of threats. Though it was a little more expensive than he’d expected to spend on any one person on his list he didn’t think anyone would get jealous of him spending more on his owl than them.

The crowds had gotten much thicker by then, and Harry was starting to think that he might have to come back another time. But then he found a store that sold ‘muggle items, customized on the spot’. Going in, he found that it was run by a pair of muggle-born who used magic to customize the otherwise non-magical items. Looking through their stock, he first found a basic organizer that he had them put Dudley’s name and a picture of a dragon on.

Next door to that store he found one that sold simple-looking necklaces, but they were enchanted to allow a single non-magical person, keyed into them by their blood, to get into Diagon Alley. A magical had to do the keying-in process, which was very simple, and then it would work for the rest of that one person’s life. He figured that his aunt might actually appreciate being able to access the magical shopping area without him being present. So long as he didn’t tell her how much it had cost him, anyway.

That left Padma, and he was thinking that he wasn’t going to find anything for her. He ended up in another second-hand shop and found a ‘bedtime book holder’ that was charmed to mark your place and move to a designated spot when you fell asleep. Since he’d heard most of the Ravenclaws (plus Hermione) whine about falling asleep with books he figured that it would work great for Padma.

Gift shopping officially done, he stocked up on wizarding sweets on his way out of the Alley. He checked outside of the Leaky Cauldron, found that his uncle wasn’t waiting for him in the area, and then popped back in to get lunch. Two hours later, and well past the point where Harry was wishing that he’d thought to pack a _book_ in his bag, Uncle Vernon drove up with Dudley. The ride home was spent with Harry and Dudley swapping stories.


End file.
